O W N Y O U R

O W N A P A R T M E N T !
S i c k o f p u b l i c h o u s i n g ? G o t a j o b ?
W i l l i n g t o t a k e a c h a n c e ? S p a c i o u s
1 - 3 B R w / h a r d w o o d f l o o r s . M i c e .
B r e e z y w i n d o w s . H y d r a t e d c e i l i n g s
H e a t a n d h o t w a t e r o n r e q u e s t .
p p l i c a n t s m u s t b e w i l l i n g t o w a i t .
y e a r s i n l i m b o w i t h n o g u a r a n t e e o f
s a l e . C o n t a c t t h e N e w Y o r k C i t y
H o u s i n g A u t h o r i t y . ( O f f e r m a y b e
w i t h d r a w n w i t h o u t p r i o r n o t i c e .
False Profit

T
he debate about rent regulation, one of the most significant local
political discussions of our time, has been stupendously dishon-
est. Neither the newspapers nor countless radio talk shows have
discussed the most pertinent elements of the landlording business: the
interconnection between rents, property values, debt and the market.
Property ownership is, after all, a business. And the elimination of
EDITORIAL
rent regulation would mean a windfall for many
landlords, a burden for many tenants, and a con-
vulsive shift in the city's real estate market-a
market that has long since acclimated itself to
rent regulation.
By the time you read this, the politicians may
have made a deal. Or State Senator Joseph Bruno
may have played his doomsday hand. Either way,
the movement to do away with rent regulations is based on the premise
that landlords can't cover their expenses and still make a profit. It's a
disingenuous premise with no basis in market realities.
Here's why. The single most significant expense on most any land-
lord's ledger is the cost of borrowed money-not government regula-
tion, not even taxes. Property owners rarely buy buildings with cash.
They take out loans, sometimes for millions of dollars.
A competent landlord determines the likely rental income on a
building he or she wants to buy, then pays a purchase price based on
that income. To cover the purchase, he borrows only as much as he
can afford to pay back, with interest. That way, the debt load isn't
unbearable.
Rent regulations have been in place for most of the last five decades.
Any sane businessperson knows if the rental income of a property he
buys is based on regulated rents, and plans accordingly. After all these
years, rent regulation has been built into the property's value. It has
been built into the market, just like property taxes, zoning rules and
environmental regulations. Anyone who buys without acknowledging the
real rent roll-the real value of a property-is ignoring the realities of
the market, and is either an idiot or a reckless speculator.
The fact that thousands of landlords have bought buildings knowing
full well they can get only regulated rents proves a point the politicians
and big-money lobbyists don't want you to know: rent regulated build-
ings are profitable.
But the sudden elimination of rent regulations would send property
values skyrocketing in many neighborhoods, especially in Manhattan. It
would be a boon of awesome proportions for landlords, both the com-
petent ones and the speculators.
Do landlords in wealthy or gentrifying neighborhoods simply have a
guaranteed right to make a massive one-time killing at the expense of
their tenants? Do incompetent, debt-ridden landlords and ruthless
speculators have the right to be bailed out of their foolishness ?
No, but they do appear to have the political clout to set the terms of
a dishonest policy debate.
Andrew White
Editor
(ity Limits
Volume XXII Number 6
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CITY LIMITS
THE GRID
. . . ,
JUNE/JULY 1997
FEATURES
Promises
They thought it was the deal of their lives. Working families jumped at the
city housing authority's offer to sell them cheap, renovated apartments. But four years
later, nothing has come of the city's pledge. And 450 Bronx and Manhattan tenants say
the dea1looks like a con job. By Glenn Thrush
Disabled Need Not Apply
Violating legal mandates to provide handicapped-accessible apartments,
the housing authority is ignoring the needs of thousands of disabled tenants, some
of whom have to dismantle and reassemble their wheelchairs just to get through
their own front doors. By Adam Fifield and Robert P. Bennett
Rudy's Tough Guise
A Democratic gadfly says Giuliani's hard-guy image is nothing more than
a powder-puff PR campaign. The mayor, he believes, is avoiding the tough decisions
that will get to the core of New York's chronic problems. By Harvey Robins
PIPELINES
Parent Teacher Conference
When Maria Jay-Vega came to New York in the early 1980s, she
couldn't understand English-or why the Board of Education was trying to
put her son in Special Ed. Now she's on the verge of founding New York's first
parent-teacher-run school in East Brooklyn. By ZhannaAgran
Dr. Downsize
The boss of a backwater Brooklyn hospital wrote the book on cutting jobs
in hospitals around the country. His slash and bum credo may be New York's
next health care wave. By Michael Hirsch
School for Wayward Landords
A long-time tenant organizer thinks the best way to turn slumlords into
conscientious owners is to teach them the errors of their ways. By Beth Fertig
VITAL STATISTICS
Workers Whirled
With 125,000 people on public assistance vying for low-skill jobs, a new
report points to the sectors where some of them may fmd toil and a paycheck.
COMMENTARY
Cityview
Cut Loose
Spare Change
Remembering Paulo Freire
DEPARTMENTS
Briefs 6, 7 Editorial
PBS: Labor's Love Lost Letters
Rudy Kicks Kiddie Clinics
HPD Gives Tenants Code Shoulder
20,000 and Counting
Professional
Directory
Job Ads
By Andrew White
126
By Joe Keith
lao
By Maxine Greene
2
4
28
29

Clullanl Delinquent
In response to the article entitled
"Rudy's Bare Budget" (March 1997), I
would like to clarify several inaccurate and
misleading points.

First, regarding assertions that the dis-
continuation of the Family Ties program
resulted in 12 staff layoffs and that it was
cut by Mayor Giuliani's office, let us be
clear about where the cuts occurred. This
program was not eliminated by the Giuliani
administration, but was discontinued due to
a change in the funding streams whereby
federal funds were no longer available.
Second, 12 staff members were not "laid
off," but were redeployed into other posi-
tions within the Department of Juvenile
Justice (OJ]) or in other city agencies.
Your readers should be aware that OJ]
has learned a good deal from the Family
Ties program and is using many of its pos-
itive elements in our other programs. In
addition, youngsters who might have been
eligible for Family Ties are now enrolled
in a similar program developed at the
Department of Probation specifically for
Spofford youth.
The article also incorrectly asserts that
the Aftercare program was cut in half
under the Giuliani administration. This
program is widely supported by the mayor
and the City Council, so much that the pro-
gram is hiring two case managers. In fact,
the program is doing better now than it
ever has before. During FY 1996, 53 per-
cent of youngsters enrolled in Aftercare
improved school attendance significantly.
It is disappointing to see that City
Limits, which is highly regarded as a cred-
ible publication, could write a piece with
such obvious factual errors. It is not up to
your usual standards to criticize an agency
without looking at the entire picture.
Marta Moczo-Santiago
Commissioner
NYC Department of Juvenile Justice
The editors reply: On her first point,
Commissioner Moczo-Santiago is correct.
We inaccurately reported that Family Ties
workers were laid off rather than rede-
ployed.
Otherwise, the larger point of the piece
is amplified by the commissioner's com-
ments. The fact that the mayor discontin-
ued a program that worked with some of
the city's most troubling youth and had an
exceptional 80 percent success rate is a
clear example of neglect. The commission-
er claims that Family Ties clients are now
enrolled in a Department of Probation pro-
gram, but this is misleading. The current
program lacks the intensive family compo-
nent that made Family Ties stand out.
As for Aftercare, the commissioner's
contention that the mayor has called for
an additional two case managers is in
fact the opposite of what has really hap-
pened. The mayor, in a FY 1997 budget
modification, called for the elimination of
two case manager positions, which were
later restored by the City Council. These
two positions are slotted for elimination
once again in the mayor's Executive FY
1998 budget proposal.
The recent decrease in Aftercare case-
loads reveals an even larger problem.
According to the Mayor's Management
Report, in FY 1993 the program served
809 young people; in FY 1996 that num-
ber dropped to 448. Moreover, the most
recent report reveals a plan for serving
only 300 youngsters. That would be a 63
percent cut.
Reckless Legal Aid
I was appalled to learn of the Legal Aid
Society's litigation aimed at halting the
Housing Authority's sensible efforts to
provide developments with a better
income mix ["Coney Island's Wild Ride,"
December 1996). As a planner and hous-
ing professional, I am keenly aware of
well-intentioned affordable housing efforts
gone awry. Coney Island's public housing
deteriorated greatly, particularly during the
1980s when federal housing policies man-
dated serving only the poorest of the poor.
Efforts by the authority to resist City
Hall's simultaneous use of their develop-
ments as repositories for homeless fami-
lies were as fruitless as obtaining flexibili-
ty on public housing admissions policies
from Washington. This resulted in concen-
trations of the poor in developments with-
out adequate services. As living conditions
deteriorated, those that were able to move
out did so, thereby obtaining a safer envi-
ronment for themselves but unfortunately
removing much needed positive role mod-
els for the remaining young people.
Elected officials, working with the
authority, were fmally able to obtain more
sensible admission policies from
Washington. Providing a workable income
mix is essential to the social health of our
public housing and vital to its economics
given the federal government's reduced
operating subsidies. Thus, more flexible
admission polices offered hope that public
housing could reverse its deterioration.
The Legal Aid Society'S misguided
efforts threaten to destroy important policy
changes.
Andrew Kelman
Manhattan
Second Cia nee
Regarding "Rental Anguish" by Beth
Fertig (April 1997). Patricia Williams had
to quit a $20,000-a-year job because she
became pregnant two years after her older
daughter's father passed away. Now she's
on welfare.
Perhaps she should have exercised
some self-control and not become preg-
nant.
She says she has to pay her phone bill
and her cable TV bill. And at approximate-
ly $2.50 a pack of cigarettes, she could be
saving $17.50 a week-if she's only
smoking a pack a day. That's $910 a year.
Cable probably runs around $50 a month,
or another $600 a year. My family makes
more than Ms. Williams did when she was
earning $20,000 a year, but we still can't
afford cable.
I by no means envy Ms. Williams, and
I wish her circumstances were much bet-
ter. However, look how much further her
current yearly income would go if she got
the special phone service offered the poor
and elderly; if she gave up smoking which
is no good for her children anyway; if she
gave up cable; and so forth. She would
certainly more than $25 a month "to
buy detergents, soap and everything like
that." She would have more than $125
extra each month.
We should be concerned about poverty
and the cost of living. But my concern is
for the people who can't get that extra
$125. A worthier family should have been
used as an example of how the city and
state are going to hell in a handbasket.
Richard D. Hochwald
South Ozone Park
CITY LIMITS
~ ............................................ .
,
Dolores (Dee) Solomon in her
newly renovated shop, Dee's Cards N
Wedding Services
CALL: CHASE COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT COMMERCIAL
LENDING 212-332-4061
Moving in the right direction
Happy Renovation Dee!
When Dolores (Dee) Solomon went after a much needed
loan to keep her struggling small business competitive she
thought it was a "mission impossible". And it was. Then
Thelma Russell, her longtime branch manager at The
Chase Manhattan Bank branch at 125th Street, connected
her to the right people.
Thelma personally introduced Dolores to the business
lending officers of the Chase Community Development
Group. Working one-on-one as a team, they customized a
loan package for Dolores. They did it with Chase's flexible
"CAN*DO" lending program which makes special
allowances for the credit challenges facing many
community-based businesses.
Dolores got her loan and business has never been better.
Stop by her shop at 480 Lenox Avenue and see for your-
self. It just goes to show you: success is still all about mak-
ing the right relationships.
: ........................ ... ~ Community Development Group
CHASE. The right relationship is everything.
8M
1996 The Chase Manhattan Bank. Member FDIC.

JUNE/JULY 1997
B
Last month, hun.dreds of black and Lallno residents rallied at a Williamsburg theatre charging the city with unfairly
f a ~ o n n g the United .Jewlsh Organization In Its bid to build millions of dollars of new housing In the area. The Southside
Fair Housing Committee charges local Hasidic residents are getting preference in public housing placements
PBS: lABOR'S
LOVE LOST
PBS has blocked the broadcast of
Out at Work, a documentary that pro-
files three working-class gays and
lesbians who face on-the-job discrim-
ination, saying some ofthe film's back-
ers-labor unions and a lesbian foun-
dation-have a conflict of interest.
For five years, filmmakers Kelly
Anderson and Tami Gold followed
a Detroit auto worker who was
harassed and physically threat-
ened when his co-workers found
out he was gay, a Cracker Barrel
employee in Georgia who was fired
because she was lesbian, and a
Bronx public library clerk who suc-
cessfully advocated for domestic
partner health benefits for city
workers while his partner was
dying of AIDS.
If P.O.V., public TV's premier vehi-
cle for independent films, had had its
way, you could have watched Out at
Work this summer. But in March, PBS
News and Information Programming
Director Sandra Heberer wrote to
PO.v. Executive Producer Lisa Heller
taking issue with what she termed

"problematical funders" -including
the UAW, the steel workers union,
locals of AFSCME and SEIU and the
ASTRAEA National Lesbian Action
Foundation, each of which con-
tributed an average of $1,000 to the
film's $65,000 budget. Arts funders
provided the rest.
"On its merits alone, we found Out
at Work to be compelling television
responsibly done on a significant
issue of our times," Heberer wrote.
But, she continued, "PBS's guide-
lines prohibit funding that might lead
to the assumption that individual
underwriters might have exercised
editorial control over program con-
tent- even if, as is clear in this case,
those underwriters did not."
PBS observers say this is
appalling, but nothing new. "It's not
the first time that PBS has used this
spurious excuse to can a documen-
tary they are clearly avoiding
because of its content, " says Village
Voice columnist Jim Ledbetter and
author of a forthcoming book on PBS.
" PBS runs scared on many subjects
related to homosexuality. The idea
that corporations can fund programs
and unions cannot is frightening and
so contrary to the historical under-
pinnings of public television that they
should be ashamed," he says, adding
that labor unions were among the
first supporters of PBS. The AFL-CIO
gave the network $25,000 when it
was founded in 1967.
Heller says she is disappointed by
the decision but had no choice but to
comply. "I have to say PBS has been
very supportive of gay programming
on P.O.V." Heller adds. "I have to
believe they identified what they per-
ceived as a conflict with their guide-
lines." Calls to PBS were not
returned.
Out at Work, which premiered at
the 1997 Sundance Film Festival in
Park City, Utah, highlights the fact
that in 40 states it is perfectly legal to
fire people because of their sexual
orientation. The film also explores the
role of unions in creating a safe, tol-
erant workplace, Anderson says.
"We worked very hard to cultivate
relationships with unions," Gold
insists. "It took a long time for the
unions to see it was in their interest
for us to do this."
There's a silver lining to the story,
however. HBO has commissioned
Anderson and Gold to make a film
about the harassment and firing of
gay and lesbian workers.
-Robin Epstein
RUDY
KICKS KIDDIE
CLINICS
Mayor Rudy Giuliani may be
trying to airbrush himself a softer
election year image, but in his FY
1998 budget-for the third year in
a row-he has attempted to axe
health care for uninsured children.
The mayor has called for $10.1
million in cuts from the city Health
and Hospitals Corporation budget
that pays for the operation of 41
child health clinics serving unin-
sured children. In operation since
the late 1800s, the clinics provide
health examinations, immuniza-
tions and dental services for kids
along with pre-natal care for moth-
ers. Although the. federal govern-
ment pays for Medicaid-insured
children at the clinics, the city
contribution-matched by $4 mil -
lion in state funds- pays for chil -
dren with no public or private cov-
erage, many of them immigrants.
"This is a kissing-babies kind of
an issue, so I don't understand why
the hell the mayor would want to
cut it," says leon Ransom, legisla-
tive aide to Brooklyn Democrat
Enoch Williams, who chairs the City
Council's health committee.
Advocates are "as certain as
we can possibly be" that the coun-
cil will restore $6 million for the
child health clinics, as it has each
time the mayor has made this
threat, says Suri Duitch, staff asso-
ciate with the Citizens Committee
for Children of New York. However,
she adds, that won't address the
fact that many clinics are housed in
buildings in a state of advanced dis-
repair. Nor will that amount cover
the $2.5 million in collective bar-
gaining agreements that have gone
unpaid since 1994.
"Our long-term goal is to make
the clinics' financial and organiza-
tional status permanent," Duitch
said. 'They' re well-run, but they
can't continue to function with a
sword over their heads."
Budget negotiations were
about to get underway when City
Limitswentto press, and the fate of
the child health clinics is likely to
be decided by mid-June. Calls to
the HHC press office were not
returned. -Glenn Thrush
CITY LIMITS
s
HPD GIVES
TENANTS CODE
SHOULDER
Officials at the city's Department of
Housing Preservation and
Development (HPD) are looking for
ways to bring the city's code enforce-
ment policy in line with the Giuliani
administration's long-time goal of mak-
ing the system more landlord-friendly.
"We are taking a hard look at
enforcement policies. We want the
housing code to be consistent with
our anti-abandonment efforts,"
Stephen Tinnermon, HPD's acting
deputy commissioner for housing
preservation, recently told a group
gathered to discuss ways to help
small landlords provide better ser-
vices to low-income tenants. 'The
focus is shifting away from the con-
ventional ' Go after the landlord'
stance. If we do that, we will force
landlords over the edge, leaving us
with additional [abandoned] proper-
ties to manage."
Tinnermon said Commissioner
Richard Roberts recently appointed
an agency task force-composed of
HPD staff-to review the code and
make recommendations within four
The Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV) and other demonstrators protest an appearance by Governor Pataki
commemorating Asian-American month. They say Asian immigrants will be devastated by the state's welfare reform.
months. The task force is to research
other cities' code enforcement poli-
cies and look for ways to make New
York's code easier for local property
owners to deal with, he said. Among
other things, the code requires land-
lords to provide basic services like
heat and hot water. "It's a balancing
act," he said. "We don't want people
freezing to death, butwe wantto help
small landlords."
Under the current system, which
20,000 AND COUNTING
for West Siders Together, says 81
percent of the registered voters who
signed the group's voter pledge
cards went to the polls. Only 59 per-
cent of registered voters citywide
voted, she said.
has long been criticized by tenant
advocates for relying on landlords
to fix their own problems, tenants
call in complaints to HPD.
Inspectors confirm the reports and
notify the landlord of any violations.
Owners who don't correct the viola-
t ions can then be brought to
Housing Court by HPD attorneys,
where a judge can hit them with sig-
nificant fines. Typically, however,
HPD lawyers negotiate with land-
lords, reducing their recommended
punishment in exchange for assur-
ances that repairs will be made.
. A network of neighborhood orga-
nizations that threw itself into voter
mobilization in November says it got
20,000 people across the city to go to
the polls based on an analysis of
Board of Elections figures. If the
Metropolitan Industrial Areas
Foundation, whose affiliates include
long-time organizing powerhouses in
East New York and the South Bronx
as well newer groups in East Harlem
and on the West Side, can double that
turnout in the fall, its number of voters
will approach that of Rudy Giuliani'S
margin of victory over David Dinkins.
Resources
WITH ALL THE TALK ABOUT
JOB CREATION STRATEGIES,
not much has been said about how gov-
ernment intervention could make those
efforts more viable. But "Developing A
Public Policy Agenda on Jobs," a new
report coming off the presses from the
JUNE/JULY 1997
Organizers compared the turnout
of registered voters they had con-
tacted with the turnout of those in
the same neighborhood they had not
contacted, concluding they had
boosted turnout by about 10 percent,
says Dave Fleischer, Metro IAFs
lead voter mobilization organizer.
Overall, Fleischer says, voter
turnout nationwide and in New York
City was down in comparison to the
1992 presidential election. But in East
New York, a neighborhood that usually
has low turnout, itwas up by 2 percent
Vonda Brunsting, lead organizer
Washington D,C. -based Center for
Community Change, does exactly that.
Chock-full of jobs-related ideas to push
on the local, state and national level,
the report is a reminder that activists
could be doing more to force govern-
ment to help low-income working peo-
ple. For a copy of the report. call Carol
Juergens at (202) 342-0567.
Metro IAFs approach is non-par-
tisan; the organization's priority is to
create a voting culture. "We want to
change the way every candidate for
office sees the neighborhoods
where we work," says Fleischer.
'The thing we're trying to teach peo-
ple is that who they vote for matters
a lot less than that they vote,
because when we all vote, the politi-
cians will treat our neighborhoods
with respect." -Robin Epstein
FOR A CLEAR-EYED APPRAISAL
OF THE "DISTRUST,"
"dishonest exchange," and "struggles
over power and accountability" that
characterize funder-created (and
often funder-dominated) community
building efforts around the country,
take a look at "Foundations and
Comprehensive Community Initiatives:
Landlord groups contend the
housing code is too Byzantine to fol -
low and say first-time violators
should be given warnings and edu-
cated about the law.
The task force will first bring its
recommendations to the commis-
sioner, Tinnermon said. "In the sec-
ond phase, we'll bring it to the com-
munity." -Kim Nauer
The Challenges of Partnership," a
report available from The Chapin Hall
Center for Children at the University
of Chicago. Call Anne Clary at
(773) 753-5900.

PIPELINE
Ecadorian-born
Maria Jaya-Vega
realized she
couldn't trust the
school system after
they mistakenly
attempted to put
her son ill special
education.
:M
Parent-Teacher
Conference
Cypress Hills mom Maria Jaya-Vega isfounding New York's
first-ever parent-power public school. By Zhanna Agran
F
or years, Community School
District 19 in the heart of the
mostly low-income East
Brooklyn has been plagued by
low reading and math scores,
poor attendance and overcrowding. With two
separate schools, PS 7 and IS 17l, forced to
share one building, overcrowding is so bad,
students in kindergarten and sixth grade are
bused out each day to other area schools.
The time has finally come for a group
of East New York parents to take matters
into their own hands. Led by the tenacious
activism of the petite and energetic Maria
Jaya-Vega, and determined to improve
their school district and spare some stu-
dents the headache of nearly 200 percent
school overcrowding, come September
these parents will have a school of their
own-literally.
Last April, Jaya-Vega, along with other
neighborhood parents and local communi-
ty development organizations, received
word that their plan to start the Cypress
Hills Community School (CHCS), a
teacher/parent-run alternative school for
District 19 students, was approved by the
small schools incubator New Visions
Foundation for a $15,000 planning grant.
They will soon be given fmal approval by
the Board of Education, along with a sec-
ond grant of $50,000.
After a year of negotiations, the city is
giving the experimental school use of three
classrooms and an office inside of neigh-
boring PS 224. It's a temporary place to
begin to set up their experiment, beginning
with only 54 students in grades K through
3. But the three-year long-term projection
for CHCS is to develop a local site large
enough for 300 students in grades K
through 8-and they have support from
District 19's superintendent-a crucial
endorsement that bodes well for the exper-
iment's staying power.
The new school is the first in New
York to test non-bureaucratic, parent-
teacher-run public school administration
in the city. "The Cypress Hills School is
going to be joining two forces-the par-
ents and the teachers," says Jaya-Vega,
who has become a familiar face around
the school board's offices. "Because
those are the groups that share the same
goals. As a parent, I want my son to have
an excellent education. Most teachers do
want to provide [that] as well."
"Parents have been involved in every
aspect of planning for this project,"
explains Megan Chambers of the Cypress
Hills Local Development Corporation,
which helped organize the effort. "They
are a majority on the plartning team and
have done everything from designing job
descriptions to interviewing candidates, to
making presentations to the community
school board. They will have real control."
Defendi ng He .. Child
Jaya-Vega grew up in Ecuador. After
coming to the United States in 1981, she
spent nearly a decade being a housewife.
Her first foray into activism came
eight years ago, when her 5-year-old son
Jimmy was going to be sent to special ed
because he was hyperactive and had a
speech problem. Vega took him for a pri-
vate evaluation and found out that he sim-
ply needed speech therapy.
"I realized that I have to learn how to
defend myself and my child," she says, in
a slow, careful meter that reflects circum-
spection-not any problems with English.
She mastered the language by taking adult
education courses at York College. Later,
after having her second child, she decided
to get a job to help support the family and
began working for nonprofit organiza-
tions, eventually landing a job with the
Cypress Hills LDC. At about the same
time, she became involved with the PTA
and soon realized that her energy and com-
mitment were a too-rare commodity.
Two Languages
Part of what fuels Jaya-Vega is anger.
She contends that in the past, District 19
had been the city's dumping ground for
teachers who couldn't be placed anywhere
else-a problem that made learning espe-
cially difficult for many students for whom
English was a second language.
Consequently, the Cypress Hills
Community School will emphasize "lan-
guage acquisition," a dual-language pro-
gram where students learn to become pro-
ficient in English and Spanish. "Students
here will retain their own language and
also learn a new one," says Jaya-Vega.
The language acquisition program is as
much about heritage and self-esteem as it
is about language. "One of the themes of
the school is to start creating new leaders,"
she says. The school plans an interdiscipli-
nary style of education, with an emphasis
CITY LIMITS
on lab work to relate subjects to real life.
For Marjorie Suarez, a parent member of
the CHCS planning committee since last
February, there was never any question that
her 6-year-old daughter Marisol would be a
part of the new project. Even though her
daughter is currently in a gifted program at
a local school, it still fails to meet her expec-
tations. "In her school, they go straight to the
text. But [at CHCS] there will be a non-tra-
ditional approach to teaching. The kids will
deal with hands-on experience before text-
books. That is motivational learning and
what I try to do with her at home."
Without the traditional hierarchy of a
principal and assistant principal, a small
planning team of parents, teachers and
community members will create the
school's curriculum and govern its budget
and scheduling. The school will have two
co-directors-one parent, Jaya- Vega, and
one teacher, Sheryl Brown, currently a
staff developer at PS 65.
Though Brown has a degree in supervi-
sion and administration-what she calls a
"principal 's license"-she says she will still
spend time in the classroom. According to
the co-directors of the new project, the
school will create an II-member council
made up of six parents and five teachers to
oversee administration. The council will
determine the direction of the school and
seek help from the school district only
when a serious situation cannot be resolved.
The biggest challenge for the new
school, however, will likely be finding
ways to keep parents involved. Jaya-Vega
and Brown both admit that the school 's
success or failure will have much to do
with the commitment from parents. "We
hope things will work on a volunteer basis.
We assume parents are going to get
involved and volunteer time to the school.
At least at this point, we have groups of
parents that are totally involved and total-
ly committed," says Jaya-Vega.
Children of all ethnic backgrounds will
be accepted into the Cypress Hills
Community School, but 80 percent must
come from District 19-which is heavily
Latino and African-American. "Whoever
sends their child here is going to be clear
about what to expect from the school, and
will know that they are going to be an
active part of the education of their child,"
says Jaya-Vega. But this plan, she says, is
for everyone. "Of course, our mission is
not only to educate the student but parents
also. We will encourage many of them to
volunteer time to GED or ESL classes,"
she adds. "Because in the long term, what
we really hope for is to build a strong
community."
JUNE/JULY 1997
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PIPELINE ~
,
Don Snell (right)
says workers at
Long Island College
Hospital will have
to r e t r a i ~ r be
"casualties in the
change."
Dr. Downsize
Don Snell plans to cut the size of his Brooklyn hospital in half.
Low-skill medical workers citywide are suffering on the cutting
edge of managed care. By Michael Hirsch
L
ong Island College Hospital
has never been ranked among
the city's best or most heavily
endowed medical centers. For
139 years, the Cobble Hill
facility quietly educated young doctors,
offering decent health care to Brooklyn
residents from Red Hook to Greenpoint.
But no one could claim it was an institu-
tion on the cutting edge.
Until now.
With the arrival of LICH's new presi-
dent, Don Snell, one of a breed of bottom-
line-obsessed hospital executives common
elsewhere in the nation but still rare in
New York, this backwater facility has
become the site of the city's most signifi-
cant battle with labor over market-driven
health care-and the real-world conse-
quences of deregulating the state's multi-
billion dollar health care industry.
Snell was hired last November to skip-
per a ship he claims was foundering, at the
time losing up to $1.5 million a month.
The 42-year-old administrator has already
cut the hospital's operating budget by $25
million-more than $21 million from per-
sonnel reductions alone. He announced the
layoff of 412 employees in mid-January
and has since eliminated another 153 jobs
that were waiting to be filled. Right now,
he is in a battle with the nurses ' union to
extract $1 .8 million in salary givebacks.
Speaking with cool enthusiasm, he out-
lines plans to reduce the number of beds in
the hospital by 40 percent over the next
two years. Staff cuts, he says, will be part
of the deal.
"This is just the start," Snell says. "It's
not a popular message, but it's sort of like
the beer commercial: 'It don't get no better
than this. ' "
Industry watchers agree this is the
beginning of another painful transition
period for New York City'S hospital
workers. A new law that took effect in
January ended the state's longtime policy
of setting the rates insurers must pay hos-
pitals. Now, insurance companies can
negotiate directly with hospitals, extract-
ing better deals for themselves. It's a
practice health maintenance organiza-
tions have exercised for years, forcing
hospitals to operate more efficiently--<>r
so free-market orthodoxy holds.
But that efficiency comes at a price,
critics say. "Financial incentives reduce
appropriate care as much as they do inap-
propriate care," says Community Service
Society health policy analyst Denise
Soffel. "They merely replace old incen-
tives to overtreat with what many of us
fear are new incentives to undertreat."
It also means hospitals have to become
much leaner-at fITst by reducing staff
costs, and eventually by merging into much
larger organizations that provide a full
range of in-patient and out-patient services.
Add the fact that hospitals can expect to
receive reduced Medicaid and Medicare
reimbursements, and the picture gets
gloomy for the more than 210,000 peo-
ple-an estimated three-quarters of whom
are women and minorities-employed in
this sector of the city's economy.
"Hospitals are still the largest employ-
ers, public or private, in almost any low-
income community within New York," says
Howard Berliner, chair of health services
management and policy at the New School
for Social Research. "These jobs have been
historically secure. They pay benefits and
they pay good salaries, particularly for
unionized workers," he says. "And now
those opportunities may be gone."
Ruth Manag.m.nt
In Snell, employees may have found
themselves dealing with the hospital
administrator of the future. After 20 years
in deregulated city hospitals in
Philadelphia, Atlanta and Detroit, Snell
brags he is one of a handful of hospital
presidents now in the city to cut their teeth
in an open-market environment. He literal-
ly helped write the book on market-driven
health care. "The Rising Tide: Emergence
of a New Competitive Standard in Health
Care, " published by a Washington think-
tank, is a seize-the-moment manifesto that
promotes a work ethos akin to (and this is
the book talking) "that of a convict recent-
ly escaped from prison and running just
ahead of the flashlights and the
dogs .. . never being able to stumble, in
order to avoid capture."
Snell has earned a nationwide reputa-
tion for the ruthless management of
shrinking hospital budgets. He is attempt-
ing to use it to maximum effect, particular-
ly in dealing with unions.
"When I came in [to LICH], the hospi-
tal was bleeding from all of its orifices,
and there was no sign that it was able to
tum itself around. I told the staff this orga-
nization would run out of cash and go into
receivership by the end of March [if noth-
CITY LIMITS
ing was done]," Snell says. While most of
the initiallay-offs came from middle man-
agement and the remainder from line
workers, he dictated that a minimum of
$1.8 million had to come from givebacks
in the nurses' contract. New hires would
receive far less and the most senior staff
would have to take pay cuts up to $4,500 a
year. Snell also canceled the nurses' auto-
matic union dues deduction, a common
practice that costs the hospital little.
The union will have to accept this, he
says. If they don' t, Snell says he is pre-
pared to fill their jobs with temporary
workers and, if need be, permanent
replacements. "As far as we are concerned,
[the negotiations are] over for us."
The nurses ' union, for its part, thinks
the fight is just beginning. "The hospital
is obligated by law to negotiate with us,"
says Elaine Charpentier, labor relations
representative for the New York State
Nurses Association and its chief bargain-
er with LICH. "We will continue to pres-
sure this administration." Charpentier
says Snell came to the bargaining table
with his final offer and "never moved off
the dime."
Every hospital worker in the city
should be watching what happens at
LICH, adds Charpentier. "Given that the
single biggest hospital expense is person-
nel, if you squeeze your costs while paying
top dollar for senior executives, the money
will have to come from downsizing
staffs," she says. "It 's the workers who are
going to get screwed."
Profit-Maximizing
Calculation
Since January, when Governor George
Pataki's Health Care Reform Act of 1996
took effect, either angels or buzzards-
depending on your point of view-have
been circling around New York City'S hos-
pitals.
The law, bringing New York in line with
every other state except Maryland, ended
rate regulations that guaranteed all hospitals
a fixed fee for services from insurance com-
panies. For years, regulators set these rates,
giving higher reimbursements, for example,
to teaching hospitals or hospitals agreeing
to treat uninsured patients. Now that they
are no longer braced by the old system,
everything from strategic planning and mis-
sion to salaries, patient care and employ-
ment rolls is subject to a new profit-maxi-
mizing calculation.
Free market enthusiasts think this sort
of herd-culling is good, arguing that lean-
er and hungrier businesses serve the pub-
lic more efficiently. They also note that
JUNE/JULY 1997
health maintenance organizations, now
dominant players in the market, have long
been able to negotiate directly with hos-
pitals, so deregulation only serves to
make the market more fair for everyone.
Others, however, worry that losing the
cushion provided by rate regulation will
prove cataclysmic.
The reality is likely to be somewhere in
between, the New School 's Berliner says.
Today, HMOs and other health plans often
demand their patients seek care whenever
possible not in hospitals, but in outpatient
clinics, rehabilitation centers or by using
services such as home health care. Since
no one is expecting demand for heaith care
security guarantees, albeit with rigorous-
some say onerous-retraining require-
ments for low-skilled staff. Snell opposes
even these provisions.
"I found it pretty amazing that anyone
would have negotiated that," he says,
adding that the job security language
promises to be a major headache for pres-
idents like himself. "Hospitals can't afford
this anymore. Everyone is going to be
reducing by 40 to 50 percent. And if you
can' t, you're going to go out of business."
Community-Based Clinics
Getting beyond the immediate cash
crunch, Snell aims to quickstep LICH into

"If you squeeze your costs while paying top dollar for senior
executives, the money will have to come from downsizing
staffs. It's the workers who are going to get screwed. "
to slacken-the population is aging and
everyone is seeking access to the latest
treatments-employment opportunities
will actually grow in outpatient services.
But low-skilled hospital workers, who
tend to be well paid with decent benefits,
are likely to be victims of the expected
wave of mega-mergers as hospitals consol-
idate and diversify, he says.
"The jobs that will be gone more or less
forever are the lower skilled and less
skilled hospital-based jobs-things like
food service workers, a lot of laboratory
work, central supply," he says. Hospital
networks will get those services from one
supplier, rather than individually support-
ing entire staffs. "The new jobs will be in
the suburbs, in managed care offices. Or
they will be jobs requiring substantially
more skills and training than these workers
currentl y have."
The unions, for their part, are fighting
back, exploiting a popular issue with the
public: All of these cutbacks seem certain
to diminish the quality of care.
Administrators crying poverty already
routinely replace high-priced nursing pro-
fessionals with "nursing techs" who have
no formal training, but are assigned to
more routine tasks formerly performed by
nurses. The New York State Nurses
Association, for example, has launched a
state-wide campaign encouraging patients
to "Ask for a Real Nurse."
In its last bargaining round, the large
Hospital and Health Care Employees
Union Local I 199 signed contracts giving
up wage increases in exchange for job
a brave new world dominated by managed
care. With competition for insurers reward-
ing those who offer the cheapest care pos-
sible, Snell thinks he has little choice but to
tum what is primarily a traditional teaching
and acute care hospital into a comprehen-
sive system serving people, in Snell's
words, "womb to tomb. " Within the next
two years, he anticipates affiliating LICH
with one of what he sees as three to five
emerging hospital associations, the major
players now being Beth Israel-Sf
Luke's/Roosevelt, the Mt. Sinai system and
the Columbia-Presbyterian!New York
Hospital/Cornell combine.
To do this, he says LICH will be divert-
ing people from hospital beds to new com-
munity-based clinics to be opened
throughout Northwest Brooklyn. LICH
now has 516 beds. Snell expects that num-
ber to be reduced to 250 by 1999.
The new system will require workers
trained in prevention, as well as primary,
sub-acute, home health and hospice care.
The staff remaining in the hospital, he adds,
will be expected to do a variety of jobs.
"Anyone who thinks that they' re going
to have the same job that they've had all
along will be casualties in the change,"
Snell says. "But if they're flexible, under-
stand where the market is going and put in
the time necessary to be retrained, they'll
actually have very good careers. The
health care industry is a growth industry.
Hospitals are not."
Michael Hirsch is a Manhattan-based
freelance writer.
-,

School for Wayward
Landlords
PIPEliNE: A tenant organizer tries her hand
at teaching her old adversaries.
EW
By Beth Fertig
U
nder fluorescent
lights in the base-
ment of a
Brooklyn bank,
Anne Pasmanick
stands before two dozen land-
lords and points to a white
sheet of paper she's taped to the
wall in lieu of a blackboard. On
it she's written the words,
"Rent," "Leases," "Housing
Codes," and "Evictions."
As she goes over the rules
for eviction, one man in the
room asks what he should do
about a tenant who hasn't paid
him for several months. "In cer-
tain indigent areas, the lease
means nothing," he complains.
"You go into Housing Court, find the
tenants in arrears for two, three, five
months-and just when the decision is
about to come, they decide to pick up
and leave. The landlord has no (recourse
for 1 grievances."
Pasmanick thinks for a moment, choos-
ing her words carefully. "There is a dis-
tinction to make," she says slowly. "There
are some people who beat the rents. There
are also some people who you interpret
that they do not pay the rents." The tenants
may be withholding rent because they are
not receiving services they are legally enti-
tled to, she tells him.
When the landlord protests, Pasmanick
willingly concedes his complaint may be
legitimate. "If that 's not your situation,
you may want to go after them. You're
entitled to do that. "
The class is a stretch for Pasmanick.
Executive director of the Community
Training and Resource Center (CTRC)
and a longtime housing organizer,
Pasmanick is used to explaining eviction
procedures and housing law-to tenants,
not landlords. But in recent months she
has found herself in the unusual position
of teaching negligent landlords about their
responsibilities and rights under the city's
complex rental laws.
All of
the property owners in
the classroom have been sued by the city
for failing to provide proper heat or hot
water. City lawyers and Housing Court
judges have agreed to waive the usual
fines for first -time offenders-which
average $400 to $500-0n the condition
the landlords attend nine hours of class-
es on heating systems, the technical
aspects of running their buildings, and
the intricacies of evictions and leases.
About 100 owners attended the pilot
project's first four courses earlier this
year, which were sponsored by CTRC
and taught with help from the Cornell
Cooperative Extension.
Pasmanick developed the Landlord
Training Program on the theory that land-
lords might provide better service if they
received a nuts-and-bolts education.
"They' re mostly little guys," she says.
"Most of them own one or two build-
ings .... They' re working people who
bought a building as a step up the ladder
of economic success." Many are immi-
grants
from
Bangladesh,
China, Poland,
the Caribbean and
elsewhere.
According to lawyers with the city's
Department of Housing Preservation
and Development (HPD), some 20 to 30
percent of the 2,300 landlords sued each
year for heat and hot water complaints
are small players, often ignorant of their
responsibilities or overwhelmed by debt
and maintenance costs. Many own
buildings wracked with problems, rang-
ing from dozens of pre-existing code
violations to deadbeat tenants, says
Susan Holtzman, an HPD attorney who
helped choose the owners placed in
CTRC's program. "These people didn't
have a clue about what they were buy-
ing," she says.
By helping them, the program also
helps low-income tenants, Pasmanick
argues. "These people are providers of
affordable housing," she says. "They' re in
the lower income neighborhoods. No mat-
ter what we feel about different people
involved, they have real profound needs
that must be met if we want to keep this
housing stock."
CITY LIMITS
Extraordinary Collaboration
The program has won enthusiastic sup-
port from landlord groups. It's "the quin-
tessential no-brainer," says Frank Ricci ,
director of intergovemmental affairs for the
Rent Stabilization Association, the city's
largest landlord advocacy group. He says
the program is a much better alternative
than fines. The RSA offered no financial
support for the pilot-the $47,000 cost was
picked up entirely by banks and founda-
tions-but it is pressing HPD to take the
program citywide, either by funding
CfRC's efforts or setting up a program of
its own. "We' ve gotten nothing but positive
feedback on this," Ricci reports.
This collaboration, however, has trou-
bled some of Pasmanick's colleagues in
the housing advocacy world, since RSA is
spearheading the fight against rent regula-
tions and tenant protection laws. In a typ-
ical broadside, one tenant organizer who
asked not to be identified says
Pasmanick's time would be better spent
seeing that housing laws are enforced.
But there is little available in terms of
technical assistance for small owners.
Pasmanick notes that one 6ty program
designed to help landlords make their heat-
ing systems more efficient has been
phased out, and she doesn 't think the city
has done enough to point landlords to
other resources.
HPD officials claim this is changing.
Stephen Tinnermon, acting deputy com-
missioner for housing preservation, says
HPD's two-year-old Small Property
Owners Advocacy Unit launched its own
10-week landlord training workshop in
April, teaching the basics of overall build-
ing management as well as the rental and
housing code laws. Participation in that
program is voluntary, however, and there-
fore fails to draw those landlords HPD
knows are troubled.
The question remains whether CTRC's
c1asses-{)r any landlord training pro-
gram--can actually motivate landlords to
take better care of their buildings. Nor is
every problem solved simply by giving
landlords more information about housing
law. People skills are needed on both sides
of the lease, as a recent class made evident.
"Legal leases, according to the attor-
neys at law, are farces!" declares Hugh
McGowan, describing a simmering dis-
pute with a tenant who refused to give him
a copy of the apartment key.
"One: the landlord is allowed access,
especially in an emergency, to the apart-
ment. [But] no! You get shoved, and
pushed and thrown down the stairs.
"Two: tenants are supposed to give
JUNE/ JULY 1997
landlords a copy of the key. [But] all of
these lawyers laugh at you and say you're
not allowed in the tenant's apartment!"
Pasmanick responds patiently, appar-
ently having heard complaints like these
before. "You're right. You're entitled to
the key to a tenant's apartment."
But she also tries to get the landlords to
see the other side.
"I'm going to go back in time when a
number of you were tenants. Was everyone
here comfortable turning a key over to
your landlord?"
"If you want to, seek eviction on that
ground," she tells McGowan. "But if it's
simply a matter of battle of wills, you're
not going to win .... You need to try anoth-
er approach, because your approach is not
going to get you the key."
Still, at the end of the class, many of
the landlords say they found the session
useful . Yvette Menes, who says she hasn't
son.
And the boiler school doe n't deal with
one of the most significant problems many
small landlords face: an overwhelming
debt load.
"I don't think people are evil, but I do
think they overleverage their buildings,"
says Steve Flax, Community Development
Assistant Vice President at East New York
Savings Bank and a former nonprofit
housing executive. "If there is a real struc-
tural problem [and they can't pay the mort-
gage on their building], you can educate
people all you want. But they're going to
protect their investment before they pro-
tect their tenants."
Pasmanick admits that to be effective
the class may need to move beyond boiler
repair and tenant relations and into finan-
cial management. To assess what would be
most helpful , CTRC plans to survey par-
ticipating landlords to determine how they
IIThese people are providers of affordable
housing. They're in the lower income
neighborhoods. No matter what we feel about
different people involved, they have real
profound needs that must be met if we want
to keep this housing stock."
been able to keep up with the heating bills
on her three-family house, says she
learned some important information about
how to operate her boiler. " It was good to
have an opportunity to learn more about
housing and things of that nature, and not
just have them drop a harsh fine on you,"
she adds.
"It's telling me again that patience is a
virtue," agrees McGowan.
Overwhelming Debt Load
Other participants insist that what they
learned in the class is meaningless in the
face of the city's housing laws. David
O'Garro, a native of Trinidad and owner
of two rent-stabilized buildings, claims
the system is crushing him. One tenant
pays only $141 as month, he says. On his
other 13 units, ' he gets $400 to $500 a
month. That is not enough to meet his
expenses, he argues. His oil bill alone can
run up to $1,600 a month during heat sea-
financed their building, what their finan-
cial status is today and what they feel they
need to learn to keep their building run-
ning smoothly and profitably.
Meanwhile, Holtzman at HPD has vol-
unteered to track the landlords to see if the
classes have any impact. But the future of
the class remains uncertain. Commissioner
Tinnermon would not comment on
whether HPD will support CTRC's class-
es, and Pasmanick says the agency has
shown little interest. If CTRC cannot find
funding elsewhere-{)r find another group
to carry the project forward-it may well
die. And that would be a shame,
Pasmanick says. "I think the collaboration
here has been extraordinary," she says.
"We helped unravel a lot of anger and
resentment and I think that worked to
everyone's mutual gain." .
Beth Fertig is a reporter at WNYC radio
news.
c-
S
oothing kid sound, the kind that makes the perfect
. background music for two dozen mothers cooking two
dozen suppers, fills a locked-in tenement courtyard off
Southern Boulevard.
Maurice Tate, a boombox of a IO-year-old bounding
among tree planters, is sheltered by a quadrangle of seven connect-
ed apartment buildings that protect him like a castle keep. The win-
dows that peer down on him are filled with fern fronds and, from
time to time, parents.
But this South Bronx idyll is broken when a dozen adults file
out of a meeting that's been held to discuss a possible rent strike.
Fragmented phrases waft to Maurice's ears as he circles around to
hear what the tenant leaders are talking about. ''I'm just fed up .. ..
Tell them bastards that we' re not gonna take any more of this .. ..
I'm at the point where I'm just ready to get out."
The anger rising on Southern Boulevard is directed at the New
York City Housing Authority, their landlord and, to hear the ten-
ants tell it, their tormentor. ~
Four years ago, most of the residents gave up crowded apart-
I'!.
ments in housing projects or rundown private housing to take units 8
renovated under the authority's Multifamily Homeownership . ~
Program (MHOP, pronouced "em-hop"). Mostly, they came to ~
CITY LIMITS
cash in on a promise: Move in, keep your jobs, deposit a small
down payment and the New York City Housing Authority will sell
you a renovated, parquet-floored apartment within 18 months at a
bargain price-no more than a few hundred dollars in most cases.
The same pledge was made to about 450 families in six
MHOP developments scattered throughout the Bronx and
Harlem. If the promise had been kept, thousands of tenants would
own their own places-and the city would have developed an
important new program to dispose of its huge backlog of tax-fore-
closed apartment houses. It was supposed to be a model of inge-
nuity and innovation.
JUNE/JULY 1997
Promises, promises. MHOP has been almost a complete fail-
ure and a study in how a bigfoot bureaucracy can trample a good
idea--even given ample money, cream-of-the-crop tenants and
the full force of the I 990s national bootstrap movement behind it.
The MHOP tenants-who pay among the highest monthly
rents of any housing authority tenants in the country-have yet to
be offered the opportunity to buy.
Meanwhile, their apartments, which looked so good at first ,
have bared their warts. Heat and hot water, though recently
improved, are intermittent amenities in many of the buildings.
Many have roofs that leak, windows that don' t fit in their frames,
warped floors, broken intercoms and mice.
These problems could be patched up. But after all the humil-
iation and frustration, the residents' faith in the idea of home-
ownership-and their confidence in their own ability to run a co-
op-will be a much tougher ftx. Now, as the housing authority is
finally beginning its big push to convert the buildings to co-ops,
many of the original would-be buyers say they're no longer sure
they even want to buy their apartments, even if all their griev-
ances are addressed.
In fact, high-ranking housing authority officials tell City Limits
they will be happy if more than half of the tenants agree to
become homeowners.
"It was supposed to be a move up on the ladder, up from a
housing project," says Tracey Bowen, a single mother who lives
at Southern Boulevard with her two daughters. "It was like a
dream come true. Yeah, you're still inner-city, but you get to own
your own apartment. You're moving up in the world. Instead, it's
been a betrayal. They're going to have to come a long way before
I'll buy this thing."
Bowen, a civilian employee at One Police Plaza, recalls open-
ing day when TV crews trailed then-Mayor David Dinkins and
Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer into the courtyard.
Now, posted next to an intercom, is a memo from the project man-
ager warning residents to give up their "nasty" habit of dumping
dirty diapers and sanitary napkins out of the windows. It's been a
long, slow ride down.
A LOT CAN HAPPEN IN FOUR YEARS. JUST ASK ALICE.
In 1993, Alice DeJerinette's life was full of familiar rhythms and fresh hopes. For
23 years, she worked as a civilian employee at NYPD headquarters coordinating case
files on major investigations. Her kids were grown and she had just adopted a two-year-
old foster child, so she figured it was time to leave her apartment in East Harlem's
Wagner Houses. On February I, 1993, she took the housing authority'S homeowners hip
offer and moved into a two-bedroom apartment on 140th Street in Harlem-with the
promise that she'd be given the chance to buy it as a co-op by mid-1994.
"You want things in your life and if you don't have a whole lot of money you're
afraid. But when opportunities come along, you take them," the 57-year-old Georgia
native says, sitting in a darkened living room that is almost obsessively clean. The only
light in the house comes from a hallway fixture reflecting off of a wooden floor that has
been so energetically polished it resembles the surface of a pond.
Soon after she moved in, Alice noticed flaws in the apartment, including holes in
the wooden planking that admitted mice, but by and large, it was still the best place
she'd ever lived. She didn't know what was about to hit her.
Within a few months, the adopted child-Alice still calls him "my baby"-was
diagnosed with AIDS. The disease progressed fast, and he died within six months.
Then, just as she was dealing with the shock, her 30-year-old son told her he too was
in the last stages of the disease. Two years later, he was dead.
As she was trying to pull herself together, struggling with bouts of depression and
anxiety attacks, she made what she now admits was a big mistake: accepting the
Giuliani administration's early retirement package.
It was like pulling the linchpin out of her life. She was sure she'd be able to get another job
quickly to replace the steady $23,OOO-a-year salary, but she hasn't been able to. Now, after four
years of waiting for NYCHA to sell the buildings to their tenants, Alice is no longer sure she
can afford to buy her apartment. Her fate will be in the city's hands when they calculate how
much she will have to pay in C(K)P mortgage payments and maintenance costs. If the month-
ly freight is too high, Alice will probably have to move back to conventional public housing.
Most of the time now she sits by the phone waiting for news about a third son suf-
fering from heart disease, a complication of yet another fight with AIDS.
"So here I am again," she says. "I feel like I got some kind of curse on me. I have
no idea what the future holds."-GT
-
M
HOP began, as most public housing initiatives
do in New York City, with the announcement
that the federal government had a new program
and was offering money.
In the early I 990s, Bush administration HUD
secretary Jack Kemp-who believed devoutly in the notion of inner-
city home ownership-offered the city $63 million to rehab 39 aban-
doned buildings. The long-neglected apartment houses came from
the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
The reason working families were singled out was simple:
their rent payments-as much as $600 a month-are sufficient
to support the proper maintenance of buildings even after
Housing Authority subsidies are withdrawn. To attract fami-
lies capable of bearing the financial and personal responsibil-
ity, the city printed 60,000 brochures and sent them to fami-
lies with moderate incomes-mostly ranging from around
$20,000 to $30,000.
The response gives some indication of the strong desire for
homeownership in low- to moderate-income communities. Around
9,600 people applied for apartments in the six MHOP develop-
ments when they became ready for occupancy in late 1992.
One of those people was a 32-year-old hospital police officer
named Diana Taylor, who had just had a baby and was looking for
a better place to raise her child. She had been living in her parents'
overcrowded flat in a Bushwick housing project.
Taylor was typical of many of the residents who moved into
MHOP buildings. At the time of her move, she was 32, single,
African American, had spent enough time on welfare in the 1980s
to know she hated it and made a modest $19,000 a year. Despite
her experience on the dole, Taylor harbored an almost militant
self-image of herself as "a working person."
After a series of intensive screening interviews and income
checks, Taylor was accepted and prepared to move into a two bed-
room apartment in the Frederick Samuels MHOP buildings in
Central Harlem. In exchange, she agreed to attend co-op meetings
and accept a monthly rent surcharge that would eventually add up
to a $1,250 down payment.
From day one, Taylor loved the fact that her nine building-mates
coveted their jobs as much as she did. She found herself making
friends with the other tenants, women like herself who struggled to
raise their kids and keep jobs that barely returned a living wage:
security workers, maintenance crew members, clerks in government
agencies, employees at neighborhood nonprofit agencies.
"We got to know each other, trust each other," Taylor recalls.
"We were all working different hours, so that meant someone would
be in the building all day long. It was nice being in a building where
everybody knew that if we wanted to stay, we had to pay the bills."
Taylor had no doubt they could handle the burden of running
their own co-op. "We knew there was a lot to running and owning
our own building, but we had confidence," she recalls. "We were
going to be a bunch of little tycoons."
O
ver the first few months, things seemed to be
moving along. NYCHA bankrolled the training
lessons and tenant ownership seminars, which
were geared toward fostering group decision-
making and teaching tenants the basics of run-
ning a limited equity co-op such as budgets, security strategies,
even providing instruction on how to spot-patch boilers.
But clouds quickly darkened the nirvana promised by NYCHA's
blue-sky brochures. After the scheduled 18-month wait, NYCHA
failed to produce the ownership agreement residents had been
promised. At first, the delay didn't seem significant, but as the
months piled up, tenants began to lose their wide-eyed enthusiasm.
CITY LI MITS
The problem, according to sources close
to the program, was that the authority's
legal, planning and asset management divi-
sions-which were responsible for
MHOP-were, on most occasions, com-
pletely uncoordinated. At other times, they
were downright hostile to each other.
"My basic feeling was that the bureau-
cracy was stifling," says a former NYCHA
staffer who didn't want to be identified
because he still does business with the
authority. "You've got career bureaucrats
who try to protect their turf and they have no
incentive to push anything new and innova-
tive along .... I never felt that this program
was important to anyone at the authority."
An internal NYCHA memo, drafted by
authority planner Tom Pryor at the end of
1994, confirms this view: "[T]here is not a
single Management Department manager
fully dedicated to the MHOP program. This
is a problem .... This is the key to a success-
ful sales effort: if NYCHA is still committed
to the MHOP program we must have some-
thing someone desires to buy."
In 1995, the authority finally sent copies of the purchase plan
to residents, only to withdraw it shortly thereafter for legal retool-
ing. It wasn't until a year ago that NYCHA made a second offer-
ing-to only 10 Samuels residents-which was then forwarded to
the state Attorney General for approval. NYCHA officials expect
the plan to be approved by the end of June along with an applica-
tion for 116 recently-rehabbed, unoccupied MHOP apartments on
upper Madison Avenue. This is expected to trigger another round
of purchase plan submissions later this year.
But the key question is whether residents will buy. Their lead-
ers, to a person, say they won't buy their apartments if the agree-
ment doesn't include NYCHA's legally binding commitment to
fix up the buildings before ownership is transferred.
Faced with such skepticism, NYCHA has now sharply scaled
back its expectations for the program. Since 1994, NYCHA has
dropped about 220 units from the program; now they estimate that
at least 200 more apartments will never be converted to co-ops.
That means only 45 percent of the original 730 MHOP apartments
will ever be converted to co-ops-and that's the best case scenario.
"I can say that we are going to convert a majority of the units.
I promise you that-you can quote me," says Jimmy Miller, head
of NYCHA's asset management division which oversees MHOP.
''If I am not successful converting 60 to 70 percent of these units
within in the next six to 12 months, I would consider myself a fail-
ure. We are going to do this. Period."
M
uch of the resentment Miller expects to
encounter from residents is based on the condi-
tion of the buildings. Before tenants even moved
in, the Tishman Construction Corporation, the
blue-chip midtown developer that had the task
of rehabbing the buildings for the city, had been kicked off the job
for substandard work. Other firms completed the job, but the quali-
ty came into question almost irnrnediately. At Southem Boulevard,
the first signs of real trouble came with the onset of winter.
"Heat? There was no heat," says Sharon Hollingsworth, who
moved in four years ago. "It was cold in the winter. The only time
it's warm is when it's above 35 degrees. There were days when
there was no heat at all.... Hot water? It's just ridiculous, the water
JUNE/JULY 1997
might be freezing cold."
After two years of feckless investigation, NYCHA crews
found the problem: the contractor who renovated the buildings
had installed a valve improperly. Still, even with the repairs, boil-
er failures and other problems have persisted at Southern and
other developments.
By the summer of 1994, the 45 families at the MHOP on
Prospect Avenue in Crotona Park East in the Bronx were so fed up
with broken security doors and the lack of window grates and
laundry facilities that they staged a year-long rent strike.
To deal with the complaints, the authority embarked on a
repair regimen, but the authority did nothing to adjust its repair
bureaucracy to assure the timely handling of new problems.
Residents still say important repairs go undone for months at a
time. The main problem, they say, is the authority'S failure to
change its one-size-fits-a11 bureaucracy to accommodate the
small, innovative program. The idiosyncratic MHOP buildings
were each simply handed over to the maintenance division of the
nearest NYCHA development with predictably poor results.
Authority officials blame much of the trouble on Congress-
which delayed $18 million in funding for repairs-and on the sheer
number of programs they have to manage. "I have got 39 other ini-
tiatives I'm working on," says NYCHA's Jirnrny Miller. "My job
would be a lot easier if I said, 'Fuck this ' to MHOP, but I'll be
damned if I'll do that. I'm committed to this."
Still, to the tenants, the repair hassles are just one more
reminder they haven' t been given control. "We were a little
shocked to wake up and realize we were still housing [authority]
tenants," Diana Taylor says. "They're so big and we're so small.
[t seems like they don't even notice we're alive."
Y
ou'd think that all of these problems would have
brought the MHOP community together for a fight.
To the core group of tenant leaders, it has, but to
the majority of residents who are caught up in their
own lives and jobs, the broken promises have
evoked a sort of torpor. At a mid-May conference convened to dis-
cuss MHOP's shortcomings, only enough tenants showed up to
fill four of the seven tables at a South Bronx catering hall, despite
Tracy Bowen 100'es her
SOli/hem BOlllel'Ord
apartment. It 's the
Housillg Authority
she's sick of
-
Lashay Chisolm, 14,
still fillds all a/ter-
school havell ill a
South Bronx MHOP
courtyard. Bill. she
wa/'llS, "Things arell't
like they used to be."
-
the free dinner and reimbursement for car service.
Though the tenants are almost all enraged at NYCHA, they
haven't shown the level of involvement that's required to run a co-
op, their leaders admit.
"It's hard to get people interested when you've been lied to so
many times," says Tracey Bowen, who is president of Southern's
residents council. In February, the Housing Authority revoked
about $95,000 in federal drug elimination money for Bowen's
development because the tenants hadn't put together the necessary
wish-l ist over the course of the year.
"The other MHOP developments, I think they' re co-op mater-
ial ," says Benita Miller, an organizer for the Urban Homesteading
Assistance Board (UHAB) who has been working with MHOP
tenants since earlier this year. "But Southern? r don' t know about
that. Southern, to me, is public housing. "
UHAB, which held a $485,000 contract to help organize the
tenants, also bears some of the responsibility itself: the organiza-
tion-which is a sponsor of City Limits-was supposed to build
the tenants into a cohesive group capable of articulating their
demands. In four years, the nonprofit group has assigned several
different organizers to the project. After June 30, UHAB's con-
tract expires.
Miller, a gregarious recent law school graduate who has devel-
oped kitchen-table friendships with many of the tenant leaders,
says she plans to volunteer after the contract expires-despite the
fact that she too has already left for another job. Nonetheless, she
believes UHAB's departure will inflame underlying friction
between tenants. "I've been at meetings where the tenants just
start screaming at each other, even though it was in front of a
housing authority official and they need to present a united front,"
she says. "One of them says: 'Your man did such-and-such!' The
other one goes: ' You' re just jealous 'cause I got a man!' and the
whole meeting will dissolve into a fight."
The loss of UHAB also means there won't be a third party to
jar some of the tenants out of their complacency.
"I think some of us are happy with the way things are, being
tenants for the rest of our lives," says Cametta Clark, a hospital
police officer who moved to the Frederick Samuels MHOP on
l40th Street after spending 40 years in Queensbridge Houses in
Long Island City.
Clark is downcast despite the sun pouring into her living room,
with its houseplant jungle and wall-sized elephant tapestry. "It's
sad. But you've got a lot of people who come from places a lot
worse than this. So people feel like their MHOPs are paradise,
even if they get lied to and the place is falling apart."
Clark, who is considered to be among the most committed
MHOP tenants by many of her fellow residents, still believes in the
program, but she doubts the MHOPs will ever go co-op. That opin-
ion was bitterly fortified when her upstairs neighbor, who had long
wanted to own a place of her own, died suddenly last year. "She
never got the chance to buy," Clark adds. "It was a terrible thing."
Y
et, ironically, it is the persistence of the repair prob-
lems that may be the key to bringing all of the ten-
ants together, uniting them against NYCHA's
absent-minded tyranny of paperwork delays and
leaky roofs.
Southern'S heating plant, according to tenants, is still inade-
quate because all seven buildings are served by only a single,
undersized boiler. In a May repair survey, many of the tenants also
reiterated long-standing demands to fix ill-fitting windows. Many
other buildings have poorly installed roofs that have caused exten-
sive water damage.
The authority has begun bidding out $5 million in roof repairs
that are due to be completed before the end of the year, but officials
stop short of saying they will complete every repair requested.
In May, MHOP tenants were talking about another rent strike,
not only to win repairs but to demand that the authority sell them
their apartments as soon as possible. If they get enough support,
the strike will start in July.
But even without the strike, city sources close to the project
say NYCHA may be on the verge of awakening from its long
MHOP coma. Authority planners are reportedly exploring the
possibility of selling off the building to tenants under the supervi-
sion of a nonprofit, which would help them organize resident
councils and select a private management company to oversee
maintenance.
If the nonprofit deal happens, the sticking point is likely to
remain residents' insistence on having all repairs done before the
sale takes place. Still, some tenant leaders privately concede
they might be willing to go for a quick
ownership transfer, just to get away from
NYCHA's blundering bureaucracy as fast
as they can.
T
here's an even deeper reason
why the tenants might be
willing to consider the fast-
track strategy. To many
MHOP residents, especially
those who have spent years in the projects,
removing the stigma of being a public hous-
ing tenant would be a concrete achievement
in itself. MHOP-the city's translation of
Jack Kemp's homeownership credo-has
been a needlessly painful, often humiliating
ordeal. Still, it was the best chance anyone
ever gave them.
"1 want to buy," says Carnetta Clark,
before turning in for an afternoon nap before
her midnight shift at the hospital. "I spent all
those years in the projects. It was like a
prison. I want to be done with public hous-
ing forever. " .
CITY LIMITS
Wheelchair-bound tenants suffer as NYCHA stalls on accessible housing.
By Adam Fifield and Robert P Bennett
F
or thousands of physically disabled tenants living in apart-
ments run by the New York City Housing Authority, the
daily routines of life have become daunting, Sisyphean
tasks. Some don' t go outdoors unless it's absolutely necessary-
because getting back inside can be a nightmare.
The Housing Authority has made a low priority of the disabled
population living in its projects. It has missed legally mandated
federal deadlines to accommodate the needs of wheelchair bound
tenants, kept more than 900 handicapped-accessible apartments
completely vacant, and apparently lost track of disabled tenants '
applications for a change of housing.
"They' re moving as slow as molasses," says Ruth Lowenkron,
staff attorney with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, of
the Housing Authority's legally mandated charge to provide for its
disabled residents. For some tenants, the net result of the authori-
ty's failures is that they must disassemble and reassemble their
wheelchairs simply to get through their own front doors. Others
sustain injuries while negotiating dark, narrow apartment hall-
ways with walkers and electrical wheelchairs.
F
or Milagros Santiago, NYCHA's attitude has been like a
dismissive slap to her family 's aspirations. Santiago's eyes
become sharp and her accent grows thick when she tells
the story of her mother's childhood battle with rickets. In a small
village in northern Puerto Rico, Eladia Santiago lived in crippled
JUNE/JULY 1997
isolation, her bones made brittle by the cruel disease. She was told
she would probably die within a few years. Her father was so sure
of her fate, he kept a tiny coffin in a kitchen cupboard.
"She kept looking at it and saying ' I am not leaving here in that
box,'" says her daughter, with a smile. "Then she literally willed
herself to walk."
Milagros inherited her mother's tenacity. Over the last 10
years, the two women have fought another battle together, against
another disease and a giant bureaucracy. Since birth, Milagros'
sister Carmen has had cerebral palsy, which has conspired with
severe mental retardation, scoliosis, and epilepsy to confine her
body to a wheelchair.
After coming to New York from Puerto Rico in 1965,
Eladia and her daughter Carmen have lived in a small Housing
Authority apartment on the 10th floor of the Amsterdam
Addition Houses behind Lincoln Center. For years, Carmen
was mostly consigned to her bed, the apartment's narrow door-
ways and corridors inhibiting her movement. Unable to get
Carmen through the bathroom door, Eladia resorted to bathing
her daughter in bed and to changing her diapers there daily.
In the late 1980s, the Santiagos made a formal request for
NYCHA to modify the apartment to make it more accessible for
Carmen, after Milagros learned that the agency was legally
required to do so by the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
"They were so obnoxious," she remembers. "They said they
Eladia Sallfiago (left )
bauled with NYCHA for
years /0 gel 01/ apart-
mellf with sui/ably wide
doors for her daughter
Carmel/ . Thousal/ds of
a/hers are s/i/l wai/il/g.
I
.3
---
weren't going to do it. "
That was before Carmen Santiago joined 15 other wheelchair-
bound NYCHA tenants in a class action lawsuit against the
agency, filed jointly in 1994 by the Legal Aid Society, New York
Lawyers for the Public Interest, Brooklyn Legal Services
Corporation, and the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association. The
lawsuit, named after the lead plaintiff, Rosa Rivera, charged that
NYCHA had failed to provide adequate housing for people in
wheelchairs and was in violation of the federal Rehabilitation Act,
the New York City Building Code and the federal Americans with
Disabilities Act of 1992.
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act required all public hous-
ing authorities to assess the needs of disabled tenants by July,
1990, and to complete necessary structural changes no later than
July 11, 1992. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of
1992 required housing authorities to evaluate their services, poli-
cies, and practices by January of 1993 and to complete any nec-
essary changes by January 26, 1995. NYCHA failed to meet
either of these deadlines, and has been desperately slow in its
efforts to make up lost time.
S
ince filing the lawsuit, Santiago and the other IS original
plaintiffs have been accommodated by NYCHA, which has
either modified their apartments or transferred them to
accessible units.
But thousands of other disabled tenants are still waltmg.
According to the federal Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD), 16,500 NYCHA tenants have mobility
impairments, including more than 4,000 in wheelchairs. As of
November, 1996, there were 2,262 tenants who had requested
modifications for their apartments, many of whom had been wait-
ing for years. At that time, the agency had completed only 433.
And as of January, there were still more than 2,100 tenants wait-
ing for modifications.
According to a motion for summary judgment filed by Legal
Aid and the other organizations a year ago, there were also at least
1,068 disabled tenants on a NYCHA list awaiting transfers to
accessible apartments.
Jane Greengold Stephens, director of social justice services for
Brooklyn Law School and one of the principal lawyers in the law-
suit, says NYCHA may have made more accommodations for dis-
abled tenants within the last six months, but notes the agency has
refused to answer repeated requests for updated information.
NYCHA spokesperson Hilly Gross refuses to discuss the num-
bers. "We can't comment on something in litigation," he says.
In January, NYCHA's dawdling was compounded by the
agency's own admission that it had 989 accessible apartments
remaining completely vacant, while there were 1,865 people wait-
ing eagerly to occupy them. City Limits has obtained a NYCHA
document dated May 1997 listing 904 accessible apartments as
vacant.
Although the apartments are clearly listed on the Housing
Authority'S "Interviewers' Guide to Vacancies" as "accessible,"
the apartments are not really "fully accessible" yet, explains
NYCHA's Gross. "HUD has very strict standards," he says.
"What we' re doing is refurbishing them to HUD standards." This
includes the further installation of grab bars for bathtubs and
showers and wheelchair ramps, he says.
Stephens responds: "If we cannot rely on their lists, even to
that extent, I don't know where we are."
Tenants have rejected some of the vacant apartments offered
because they were in far away parts of the city. It 's a major prob-
lem, says Stephens. Apparently oblivious to the needs of disabled
tenants, the authority placed the units in buildings with high
vacancy rates-rather than in developments where the disabled
already live. "They did not take into account the needs of the spe-
cific people waiting to be accommodated," she says.
Moreover, advocates add that tenants' applications for modifi-
cations are frequently misplaced in NYCHA's bureaucratic shuf-
fle. "When applications are going out for retrofitted apartments,
they're getting lost," charges Gail Kalmowitz of the Center for
Independence of the Disabled in New York, which advocates on
behalf of many disabled NYCHA tenants.
T
he Housing Authority'S stalling has also aggravated the
federal government. In December 1996, after HUD
refused NYCHA's request for an extension of the
Americans with Disabilities Act deadline, the two agencies
entered into a voluntary compliance agreement obligating
NYCHA to add 3,464 accessible apartments to its stock during
the next few years. The authority also agreed to eventually
make 5 percent of all of its housing accessible to wheelchair-
bound tenants, which translates to more than 9,000 accessible
units and represents a commitment of almost $70 million in fed-
eral funding.
Yet according to Stephens, NYCHA has already failed to com-
ply with part of the HUD agreement, which requires the retrofit of
315 tenant-occupied apartments per quarter beginning with the
flrst three months of this year. She says NYCHA's own documents
show that their plans are to retrofit between 191 and 226 units per
quarter for the next year and a half. "Based on the information
they have given us so far, it looks like they are not in compliance,"
Stephens says.
HUD spokesperson Adam Glantz says federal regulators
believe NYCHA is sticking to the agreement. "We believe they
are doing their best," he adds, while acknowledging that tenant
accounts of delays are "trOUbling."
Some at the authority insist they have the situation under con-
trol. "By June 1998, we will have accomodated everybody who
has an active request for a reasonable accomodation," says an
authority official who asked not to be named. But even he admits,
"The Housing Authority did not do this thing smartly, particular-
ly back in the early years."
In May, a U.S. Magistrate Judge recommended denying a
motion for summary judgment filed by Legal Aid and its counter-
parts in the lawsuit, kicking the case to District Court Judge Peter
Leisure, who could move it to trial.
T
he reasons for NYCHA's sluggish performance are a
mystery even to the lawyers. To disabled tenants, it 's sim-
ply a hardship-and an illegal one at that. "They seem to
think that disabled people don't have a life," says Kalmowitz.
Olga Figueroa's apartment at the Lillianl Wald Houses in the
East Village is adorned with photos of friends and family who
clearly occupy a great place in her life. As she speaks with pride
about her 15-year-old daughter Natasha, several friends phone to
check in with her and make plans for the weekend.
But, like so many others, Olga Figueroa is still waiting for
NYCHA to follow through on its promise to make her apartment
wheelchair accessible. Her daughter, Natasha, who has cerebral
palsy, is confined to a wheelchair, and she often gets stuck in the
small apartment's narrow hallways and sharp corners. "I was
approved for a bigger apartment in 1993. Here it is, 1997, and I
still don't have one." .
Adam Fifield is afrequent contributor to City Limits. Robert P.
Bennett is a Long Island-basedfreelancer who specializes in dis-
ability issues.
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Conventional wisdom says Mayor Giuliani is stripping
government bare for the good of New York. Not a
chance, says the city' s former director of operations:
the mayor has taken the easy way out, avoiding hard
choices that would truly make this a livable city for
hard working people. Some solutions by Ha,.vey Robins
-
THE MAYOR is SETTiNG
US UP FOR A HiT. AGAiN.
'"
hile the media glows with reports of an
unexpected budget surplus for the current
year, the spreadsheets reveal a far dimmer
future: the mayor 's proposed $33.5 billion city budget for fis-
cal 1998 leaves the city with chronic annual gaps of $2 bil-
lion in 1999, $2.9 billion in 2000, and $2.7 billion by 2001.
That means New Yorkers face the prospect of more severe
cutbacks in city services, even deeper than those sustained
during the last three years.
This is the modem corollary to the 1970s concept of "planned
shrinkage." The target is the many government services that
make New York a livable place for the majority of its hard-work-
ing citizens, such as education, parks, mass transit, libraries,
community centers, neighborhood-based arts organizations and
code enforcement.
This version of planned shrinkage has been underway for
years. Every recent budget has projected deep deficits, providing
steady pressure for the permanent dismantling of necessary gov-
ernment functions.
The mayor 's budget is also silent on the city's overall econo-
my. The unemployment rate as of April 1997 was 9.7 percent,
nearly double the national rate of 4.9 percent, the greatest gap in
30 years. His budget ignores this and other growing problems for
city residents, includi ng the continued decline in living standards
for all but the wealthy.
We need leaders who will admit publicly that bold changes and
vastly differei1't spending priorities are required in our city. This is
not just a question of finding additional sources of government
revenue-although, if we are to confront our city's problems in a
fair and meaningful way, the wealthiest individuals and corpora-
tions must pay their fair share. Even more important is redirecting
the billions that the city already spends with the conscious goal of
serving the average New Yorker.
By starving our core services, City Hall has taken the easy way
out. The mayor's strategy is certainly not making this a more liv-
able city for most of its residents.
All is not well in New York City. In truth, data available from
a host of sources tell a far different story from the positive spin
peddled by the mass media and the Giuliani administration.
Indeed, in the last three years:
Transit riders have sustained a 20 percent bus
and subway fare increase, from $1.25 to $1.50. Thus the state
has stuck riders with 76 percent of their commute's true costs-
the highest burden of any city in the nation. Meanwhile, tolls
have been jacked up 16.6 percent and the city has boosted taxi
fares 20 percent.
The Rent Guidelines Board has burdened
tenants with a 5 to 7 percent increase for "stabilized" units-the
largest increase in 10 years. The recent Bureau of the Census'
Housing and Vacancy Survey showed an increase in the average
share of personal income needed by every New Yorker for rent.
The figure rose from 30.8 percent of gross income in 1993 to 32.3
percent today.
The state increased tuition at SUNY and CUNY by $750
two years ago and another $400 is projected to be added this
year--compelling many to suspend their higher education or bur-
dening them with increased debt for using a system that was free
for their parents.
The city's inflation rate for 1996 was 2.9 percent-sur-
passed by only two other cities, Miami and St. Louis.
CITY LIMITS
REALiTY CHECK:
ECONOMic DOLDRUMS
M
eanwhile, the city's economy is deeply divided.
While the banking and securities sectors are richly
blessed with profits, many other sectors have been
left behind. The slow rate of growth and uneven distribution of
economic rewards are very troubling. In fact, if the latest Wall
Street boom is subtracted, the city's economic performance is quite
unimpressive. It is increasingly hard for ordinary workers to find
jobs. February's unemployment rate climbed to its highest level in
three years. In Brooklyn and the Bronx, the unemployment rates
were 12 percent and 11.4 percent respectively. Some economists
fear that the city may no longer be able to produce significant entry
level jobs-jobs that the city has historically depended upon.
A few key indicators:
Economic forecasts show no significant job
growth over the next four years. The recent upturn in the national
economy has bypassed the city. Despite the strong economy that the
city enjoyed in 1996, mostly due to the Wall Street boom, its job
growth lagged behind that of the rest of the nation.
New York City was among the nation's weakest
economies, according to a February report from City Comptroller
Alan Hevesi. Of the nation's 20 largest urban centers, the city had
the highest unemployment rate last year and was outpaced by all
but five cities in the percentage of growth of new jobs.
Wages have remained stagnant for 20 years. The hourly
factory wage in New York City is $2 less than the national average.
New York City can claim the nation's largest gap
between its richest and poorest citizens, and the gap is getting
wider. Such income inequality often signals a low rate of eco-
nomic growth. Author Robert Fitch's analysis of one statistic tells
us everything about this imbalance: 55,000 of the richest house-
holds in Manhattan have more wealth than the entire bor-
oughs of Brooklyn or Queens. Since the 1960s, commuter
income has been growing more than twice as fast as New
York City residents' income.
Beyond the unemploy-
ment statistics, there are some troubling
signposts. In New York City, 44.8 percent of
adults have dropped out of the workplace
entirely-an all-time high. Of the 24
largest metropolitan areas, New York City
has the highest non-working rate (propor-
tion of residents who are either unem-
ployed or non-participating) .
The number of 16 to 19-
year-olds in New York City who have
dropped out of school and are now unem-
ployed is twice the national average.
Sixty percent of the
city's unemployed receive no unem-
ployment insurance benefits because
low-wage workers are frequently inel-
igible. Current federal and state laws.
deny coverage for part -time and sea-
sonal workers .
In 1995 there were an esti-
mated 1.63 million people without
health insurance in New York
City-about 22 percent of the
population. That 's up
from 19 percent the
previous year. The
United Hospital
JUNE/JULY 1997
Fund projects that this trend will continue to worsen.
According to the Census Bureau, 27 percent of New
Yorkers-approximately two million-live below the federal
poverty line, which is $13,330 a year for a family of three. The
poverty rate for the elderly has grown to 16 percent in New York
City, according to the Council of Senior Centers and Services.
The city has redistributed a significant amount of income and
wealth upward without managing to raise the living standards of
most city residents. As a city, can we tolerate increasing dispari-
ty-the wealthiest among us secured $6.1 billion in bonuses on
Wall Street in 1995 and $8.1 billion in 1996-while jobs and
wages stagnate and overall living conditions decline for the work-
ing classes and the poor?
BREAKiNG
GOVERNMENT'S BACK
A
s the economy suffers, city services continue to dete-
riorate because of City Hall budget choices. Already,
officials have cut more than $4 billion and eliminat-
ed 21 ,000 municipal jobs. The new standard for government
these days can best be described as "harsh minimums. " Year after
year, the mayor announces a budget that further erodes the pub-
lic services that form the backbone of the city's neighborhoods
and environment.
Mass transit, the essential engine of city life-is in
decline once again after a decade and a half of an impressive come-
back fueled by a massive infusion of capital. Buses and subways
are running less often, overcrowding is increasing as are service
breakdowns, fires, and graffiti; trains and track beds are dirtier; rats
are commonplace on track beds; poor lighting and water drips are
common in many stations; the sound systems are inaudible; and
there are longer waits to buy tokens. The recent with-
drawal of $1.75 billion in resources promises fur-
ther decline. The current approach to fund-
ing mass transit will result in
--
still higher fares, poorer service, more deferred maintenance, and
increased debt. Shifting the burden to riders through fare increases
like last year's 20 percent hike is a substantial assault on the mass
transit system and all who use it. The LIRR and Metro North com-
muter railroads move 6 percent of the state's passengers but collect
21 percent of state aid. It is doubly hurtful when you consider that
suburban commuters earn twice the salaries of city residents.
Public schools continue operating in increasingly
overcrowded space and with inadequate textbooks, supplies,
equipment and desks. Class size has gone up: an average first
grade class had 26.8 students in the 1995-96 school year, two
more than in 1993 or 8 percent more crowded. And in the last
year, class size increased to 28, according to a New York Times
survey, while the mayor and Board of Education claimed that
class size averaged 25. Reading scores in 1996 dropped to a nine-
year low with only 41.6 percent of students reading at or above
grade level. Two out of every three public school third graders
read below grade level.
In the next decade, the school system is expected to grow to
nearly 1.3 million students. It will need space for 300,000 addi-
tional students by 2004. The Board of Education's five-year fiscal
plan-which ends in 1999-has enough money to build space for
only 30,000 more students. Every year since 1993, the city has
devoted less and less money to capital construction. In 1997, it's
$709 million. A recent Board of Education report outlining the dire
physical state of the schools said that they need $7.5 billion for the
rest of this decade or nearly $2 billion per year in capital spending.
Over the past four years, more than $1 billion has been cut from
the city's school budget. Per pupil spending is less now than at any
time in the last decade. To compound these cuts, the state's educa-
tion aid formula disproportionately benefits wealthy districts, short-
changing New York City schools by over $200 million annUally .
On the poverty front, there were 681 soup
kitchens and food pantries when Mayor Giuliani took office.
Today, there are 903 operating throughout the five boroughs. In
other words, more than one of these facilities has opened every
week 3ince the mayor took office in 1994. Food for Survival, the
central supplier of soup kitchens, distributed 27 million pounds of
food from July 1995 to June 1996. That was 35 percent more than
in the previous 12 months.
Currently, some 3.5 million meals are served to 350,000 indi-
viduals. Yet it hasn't been adequate. The demand for food at soup
kitchens and food pantries across the city has surged over the past
three years, forcing neighborhood centers to tum away some
60,000 people a month in 1996 due to insufficient food supplies.
As a new round of federal cuts in welfare and food stamps kick in,
we can expect these numbers to increase.
WHAT iT MEANS TO BE TOUGH
B
efore we reduce the taxes of a major corporation by
one more dollar, we need to put an end to the accep-
tance of harsh minimums as our standard for gov-
ernment services. The alternative is to embrace a grim and relent-
less prospect of a steady decline. With different
choices, we can make this a livable city
for all.
We need leadership that will be
honest with us-to admit publicly that
bold changes and significant
spending in the near term
are required in our city
and that these changes
cannot be achieved at
the margins or on the
cheap. Vast sums of public and private investments are required.
We are a city of such enormous wealth that, if redirected and-
yes-redistributed, these investments are clearly within our reach.
In order to get the city's fiscal house in order, substantial contri-
butions are required from the wealthy, commuters, property owners,
and the city's municipal labor workforce. We also have to help the
poor become middle class, not through stop-gap workfare pro-
grams, but through education and the creation of living wage jobs.
First of all, we need to revise the city's tax structure. These
would be some of the most controversial and difficult moves a
politician could make, and only a strong leader calling for a true
urban renaissance would succeed. Yet without these changes, the
rich will continue to profit mightily while the city itself contin-
ues to decline.
Tax revisions could include:
A tax on the elite nonprofit institutions, such as private
universities, voluntary hospitals, and foundations. They currently
pay no taxes, although some contribute modest Payments In Lieu
of Taxes (PILOTS). A new tax formula could include a graduated
tax for those institutions with a budget exceeding $5 million a
year. More than $750 million could be raised from this sector.
Top-bracket earners could also sustain a high-
er income tax rate. Their earnings have increased dramatically in
recent years. A 2 percent increase in personal income tax would gen-
erate $600 million. New York would still rank highest among the 50
states in after-tax income for the richest I percent.
Ask commuters to contribute their fair share
toward the city that provides them not only employment and ser-
vices, but also cultural activities. Since the 1960s, commuter
income has grown more than twice as fast as New York City res-
idents' income. Currently, the city receives 0.45 percent of com-
muters' wages (compared to 4 percent in Philadelphia). Nearly
750,000 people commute to work in New York City each day.
Increasing the commuter tax to just I percent in the FY 1999 bud-
get and to 1.5 percent in FY 2000 and 2.0 percent by 2001 would
raise at least $500 million.
End the other AFDC, Aid for Dependent
Corporations. According to the City Project, New York loses more
than $500 million in revenue annually on lUXUry and office build-
ing tax abatements and other corporate welfare-a massive redis-
tribution of resources that will affect New York City for decades
to come. If the city stood tall and didn't blink each time a corpo-
ration threatened to leave, their executives might feel less com-
pelled to behave like billionaire S.I. Newhouse, Jr., the Conde
Nast chairman, who snookered the city out of $10.75 million in
tax abatements. The city should review existing giveaway agree-
ments and renegotiate them where corporations have reneged on
job retention and job creation levels. This practice must end. It is
unfair to those businesses that are paying full fare now.
The current property tax structure unfair-
ly subsidizes owners of one, two, and three-family houses at the
expense of renters and business. Private homeowners represent 44
percent of the total market value of taxable property, but pay only
12 percent of the total city property tax levy, while apartment
buildings and businesses pay a far larger, unequal share. This is
the city's largest tax and its most underutilized revenue source. A
three-year plan should include a phased increase in property taxes
to add $2 billion in city revenues.
SHARED LABOR
A
side from boosting revenues, the city has to change
the way it does business on a number of other
fronts.
City workers should make living wages and
CITY LIMITS
should be treated as respected partners in making the city liv-
able. Workers must share the sacrifice so that needed services
can continue to be provided. Their wages and benefits should
continue to be good, but not better than comparable public
employees elsewhere.
Approximately one-half of the city's operating budget is labor
costs, paying for the existing workforce as well as retirees. Since
1994, City Hall has negotiated wage increases averaging 15 per-
cent to most municipal workers over a five-year period, yielding
little or no sustainable productivity savings.
A labor contribution of $1.5 billion with recurring savings,
combining increased productivity and a roll-back in fringe bene-
fits, must be a significant component in achieving fiscal stability.
Generous fringe benefits and work rule changes won by unions in
the past can no longer be sustained at current levels. And we should
restructure the pension review process so that tax-free disability
pensions are strictly awarded. Golden parachutes must end!
If the city's workers received benefits more in line with those
of federal government workers-increasing the work week,
reducing paid holidays, sick days, and vacation time, mandating a
higher employee (and retiree) contribution to health care costs-
savings of one billion dollars could be achieved .
In addition, residency requirements for teachers,
police, fire, corrections, and sanitation workers-more than half
of the city's workforce-should be imposed, through a voter ref-
erendum if necessary. This provision should extend to workers of
the Health and Hospitals Corporation, Emergency Medical
Services, and community-based nonprofit organizations that have
contracts with the city. Commitment to work is more solid when
employees live in the city that they serve. Residency also keeps
local wealth circulating within our neighborhoods. Why not one
standard for all city workers?
Future economic development
strategies should also make a priority out of securing a
fair share of resources from state authorities. This means a fair
redistribution of MTA and Port Authority resources. The city's
transit system moves 81 percent of the state's transit riders but
receives just 61.5 percent of state transit aid. The city should also
receive 70 percent-not 50 percent-of the surplus revenues from
the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. The current 50-50
split between subway and commuter rails favors commuter rails.
And the Port Authority must spend a fair share of its capital on
projects that help the city's economy, rather than redirecting funds
to New Jersey as it has for so many years.
BuiLDiNG THE LiVABLE CiTY
A
ny increase in revenues should be dedicated to
ensuring that public space, broadly defined, be
clean, safe and in a state of good repair. This
would include:
Keeping libraries in every neighborhood open
seven days a week, 10 hours a day.
Renewing the parks.
Maintaining recreation centers open seven
days a week with schedules emphasizing after-school, night, and
weekend hours, and creating night high schools in all five bor-
oughs.
Providing night and weekend activities for youth at
schools, settlement houses, community schools, Beacon Schools,
and community-based youth organizations.
Supplying additional food and other resources to the
city's 903 community-based soup kitchens and food pantries so
that no hungry people are turned away.
Establishing and strengthening neighborhood-based
JUNE/JULY 1997
art and cultural institutions. There
is now an increased awareness that
the arts sector is important to edu-
cation, the city's economy, and the
quality of life in our neighbor-
hoods.
"Eight days a week. " All
neighborhood services (e.g.,
libraries, recreation centers, art
and cultural centers, youth cen-
ters) would be open 10 am - 8
pm, including weekends, so resi-
dents can take full advantage. At
the tum of the last century, settle-
ment houses and night high
schools were "spaces" where people
sought refuge from their tenement poverty and secured advance-
ment through education.
To achieve all of this, City Hall must begin managing with a
purpose, ensuring that the work of government gets done, and done
well. By providing high quality, equitable services, the mayor
would guarantee a new popular respect for government-and a
new willingness to support government services through taxes .
There must be a single standard for code enforce-
ment. Unscrupulous landlords, sweatshop owners, abusive cops,
corrupt contractors and those who illegally dump garbage in our
neighborhoods should be put on notice that the days of lax
enforcement are over. Expressions of outrage from the media and
City Hall would go a long way toward telling those who exploit
tenants and workers and despoil neighborhood space that they
will be taken to task with the same tenacity that the city currently
asserts toward fare beaters and teenagers who deface public space
with graffiti .
Get serious about restructuring services. The city
must have purposeful , performance-based management.
Nonprofit and for-profit contractors as well as city agencies
should be able to produce clear, verifiable documentation of
their performance. Clear quantifiable goals for every city service
must be set and evaluated every year, and they must be under-
standable to the public. How long does it take to get a clinic
appointment or lab test results? How smooth are our road sur-
faces? How many sweatshops have been closed? How many
uncertified teachers are in each school? How many welfare
recipients who have left the rolls have found work and remained
employed beyond one year?
TOUGH CHoiCES
O
ur leaders have to start making choices that favor
those who live and work in the city. New York
City residents have become accustomed to mak-
ing do with less and tolerating harsh economic realities, declin-
ing living standards and decaying government services. We have
to demand more.
The conventional wisdom has it backwards. Getting tough
does not mean reducing government spending at all costs. It's
about changing the way we spend our money and finding new
revenues when necessary, so we can invest in high quality,
effective and valued services that we all agree government has
to provide.
Getting re-elected, by comparison, is an easy trick .
Harvey Robins worked more than 15 years in city government.
He was director of the Mayor's Office of Operations during the
Dinkins administration.
--
CITYVIEW
Cut Loose
By Joe Keith
Joe Keith is a
PhD candidate
in English and
comparative
literature at
Columbia
University.
14
I
t has been 12 years since a group of teenagers filed a law-
suit that ultimately required New York City to supervise
adolescents in foster care until they tum 2 I-and prepare
them to make it on their own once they leave. The judge
in the case concluded that foster care agencies often
forced unprepared young adults out of care once they turned 18,
many of them landing directly in shelters, vacant buildings,
public terminals and on the streets.
In response, the city agreed to provide adequate career coun-
seling and training in skills such as finding an apartment, bud-
geting and shopping. Thus, the Independent Living Skills pro-
gram was born.
Yet from the beginning, the city failed to articulate a clear
direction for the program, and it has clearly been a failure. Of the
approximately 1,000 young adults who age out of the system
each year, far too many are still sent out into the world
ill-prepared to deal with the challenges of fmding a job
and a home. Scores continue to end up in the city's
shelters, or worse, prison.
This year, the city's Administration for Children's
Services set out to reform the independent living pro-
gram. If the reforms are to succeed, they need to take
seriously the lessons of front line staff like myself
who have been directly involved with these
teenagers.
I entered the foster care world fresh out of col-
lege, responding to an advertisement for an inde-
pendent living caseworker at one of the city's
largest and most well-respected foster care agen-
cies. I asked the interviewer, "What's independent
living?" He dryly responded, "That's a good ques-
tion." He told me about the lawsuit and the city's
requirement that all foster care agencies provide
40 hours of independent living skills training annually to each
adolescent aged 14 to 21. If that directive sounds vague, it was.
In the two years I worked there, our independent living pro-
gram lacked focus and a set of achievable goals. Without them,
the fledgling program began to dissolve. Now, some three years
after I left, the program has withered even further on the social
services vine. Today at my former agency, teens get little more
than an occasional workshop, driving lessons and a monthly
stipend check-an incentive for their participation.
Our first problem during my tenure was getting the foster
care kids to the agency for our classes. The teens ' caseworkers
received the new program with skepticism, often resenting
having to expend so much effort into getting their charges to
come to the agency on a weekend. Soon, to make it more man-
ageable, the schedule of small and frequent workshops on a
variety of specific topics-how to write a resume, how to find
an apartment, how to conduct yourself in an interview-
devolved into day-long circus affairs scheduled once every few
months. By the end of my time there, I found myself standing
alone in front of 70 bored teen-agers for eight straight hours
one Sunday trying to hold their interest with a sermon on the
importance of budgeting.
Yet many of the kids could not even read. Inevitably, the
whole premise of "independence" falls apart when adolescents
don' t even have the basic reading skills to understand a lease or
use the classifieds. We brought in an outside education coun-
selor who found that over half of the kids living in our group
homes were dyslexic. We set up weekly reading workshops to
help them. But again, we faced the problem that no one could
convince the kids to attend class. And so, after five weeks, cit-
ing a lack of interest, the agency ended the reading classes.
Slowly, as that first year stumbled to a close, the program
degenerated into an unbridled search for the quickest route
to the magic number of 40 hours. In addition to the occa-
sional seminar, we took the teens to Action Park, a New
Jersey amusement park. That counted for eight hours. We
took them away to camp-16 more hours. One night we
showed the film Stand By Me-two more. And that was it.
The year ended, and we had a file cabinet full of paper work
to show we had lived up to our 40-hour obligation.
As the program dwindled, the city's foster care budget was
shrinking. Higher-ups at the agency began diverting indepen-
dent living money into other areas, and once they tasted that
fruit there was no turning back. Today, the program no longer
has an office, director or caseworker.
The agency I worked for-and the program as a whole-
needs to refocus and redefine its goals. I would offer two imme-
diate changes.
First, take 14- to 17 -year-olds out of all the workshops, aside
from classes on family planning. No one can realistically expect
an eighth-grader to be interested in lessons about finding an
apartment or saving money by buying in bulk. Fourteen-year-
olds, particularly those in foster care, have more pressing things
to worry about.
The workshops should instead be reserved for teens on the
verge of aging out of foster care and, importantly, those who
already have. Instructors could then work with the very real sit-
uations these teens are facing. They could help young adults
understand how the job world works, how to find affordable
housing and how to get government benefits if they need them.
Second, the agencies should refocus their energies with
younger teens on basic educational programs. No child who
ages out of foster care lacking basic reading and mathemat-
ical skills has a reasonable chance at becoming truly inde-
pendent.
All adolescents must be taught basic Living strategies to
become happy, functioning adults. But those aging out of fos-
ter care, lacking support from their own families, need this
desperately. Without such help, the fall can be quick and pre-
cipitous .
CITY LIMITS
Workers Whirled
B
arring major changes in politics and welfare law, by
this time next year as many as 125,000 New
Yorkers currently on public assistance will have to
participate in workfare. If they want to sidestep the
onerous rules and underappreciative supervisors of
the city's Work Experience Program, they' ll have to find jobs.
Where, exactly, will all these people find a paycheck?
VITAL STATS
requiring no more than a high school education, according to
a state labor department analysis of the city employment mar-
ket, the authors report. Problem is, many of those jobs will be
filled by people who are already working, some of them taking
on a second part time job. And there are 278,000 unemployed
people vying for them as well. What's more, these jobs don't
pay well. Hiring is most substantial in retail, but these positions
Nearly three-fifths of the men
and women on public assistance in
New York never finished high
school, and no matter how vast the
city's economy is, it's a brutally
competitive place for low-skill
workers with little formal educa-
tion. Overall, the official unem-
ployment rate is nearly 10 percent,
Earnings of workers with less than a high
school education have dropped 17 percent
since 1979, to barely $14,000 a year.
and after accounting for inflation, the earnings of workers with
less than a high school education have dropped 17 percent since
1979, to barely $14,000 a year.
With that sweeping caveat, it's important to note that there
are a lot of jobs out there. Nearly one million men and women
without a high school education are employed in the New York
regional economy, and another 1.4 million workers have only a
high school degree, according to a report by the Appleseed con-
sulting group, published last month by the Community Service
Society. The report, titled "Where the Jobs Are," offers a few
quiet hints about where people on welfare might find employ-
ment. It's a rough but helpful primer on the above-the-table,
low-wage economy, pointing out the sectors where hiring is like-
ly to be significant and making a few common sense recom-
mendations for moving welfare recipients to work.
As many as 355,000 people will be hired next year into jobs
are often part-time, non-union and in the $5 to $6 an hour range.
Health insurance is available only to full-timers. And turnover
rates are notoriously high.
Another point to consider: the state's estimates reflect a rel-
atively healthy stage in the business cycle. No one can predict
when or how deep the next recession will be, and how it will
affect the job market.
The Giuliani administration projects that 43,000 city wel-
fare recipients will take paid jobs next year. It may be too tall
an order, say the authors of the Appleseed report. They recom-
mend a concerted effort to target specific large sectors-appar-
el, transportation, universities-where outsiders currently have
a tough time gaining access. And they say there's no substitute
for better training, job counseling and education in an economy
that is increasingly evolving toward more highly skilled work.
-Andrew White
WHERE THE JOBS ARE MOW
A look at low-skill employment in Mew York City
Sewing machine operators
Nursing aides/orderlies
Truck drivers
Child care workers
Receptionists
Home health aides
Retail clerks
Bookkeeping clerks
Food preparation
Security guards
Waiters/waitresses
Janitors/cleaners
Retail cashiers
Retail sales
Source: NYS Dept. of labor; Applesead.
JUNE/JULY 1997
I
o
6,740
7,710
7,790
9,930
9,960
9,960
9,960
11,660
11,920
12,430
13,280
15,010
19,040
I
State labor
officials estimate
that during the
next few years in
New York City,
about 350,000 jobs
will be filled annu-
ally that require no
more than a high
school education.
The chart shows
occupations in
which large num-
bers of low-skill
workers are likely
25,490 to be hired.
5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000
-t
C ommunity D evelopment L egal A ssistance C enter
a praiect of the Lawyers Alliance far New York, 0 nan profit organizati on
Real Estate, Corporate and Tax Legal Representation to Organizations
Tax Syndications Mutual Housing Associations
Homeless Housing Economic Development
HDFC's Not-for-profit corporations
Community Development Credit Unions and Loan Funds
99 Hudson Street, 14th FI , NYC, 10013 (212) 219-1800
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2 I 2 344 0 I 9 &
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
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100 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, (718) 624-6850
LAWRENCE H. McGAUGHEY
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Meeting the challenges of affordable housing for 20 years.
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CITY LIMITS
PUBLICIST ASSISTANT. Small, fast-paced, progressive, social issues PR
firm seeks detail-oriented, well organized, pro-active publicist assistant
for immediate start date of June 1997. Candidates should possess
good communications skills. Duties include general administrative sup-
port. Knowledge of databases, Word 6.0, and the World Wide Web
essential. Excellent opportunity for recent college graduate. Send
resume with cover letter and salary requirements to: Mr. R. Raymond,
Pro-Media Public Relations, 225 West 57th Street, NY 10019. Or fax
to: 212-245-1889. No phone calls, please.
ASSET MANAGER. ESIC seeks asset manager to assess project perfor-
mance and tax credit compliance, work with groups, review condition of
financials and properties. MA plus experience in community develop-
ment or finance preferred. Salary commensurate with experience. Mail
resume to: ESIC, 888 Seventh Ave., Suite 603, NYC 10106 or FAX to
212-262-9635.
DIRECTOR OF LENDING for a $12 million national community develop-
ment financial institution. Manage all aspects of lending; provide lead-
ership on community investment issues. Requires 5 years' community
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for Community Economics, 57 School St., Springfield, MA 01105.
AA/EOE.
PROJECT DIRECTOR. Collaborative of 50 organizations in the South Bronx
seeks a project director to implement a neighborhood-based job and
business development project. Qualifications preferred: Master's
degree in business/public administration or related field; minimum
three years' experience in developing and implementing economic
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ment to the empowerment of low-income reSidents/communities and
community building. Ability to work with diverse constituencies, agen-
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East Side House, 337 Alexander Avenue, Bronx, NY 10454. Fax: 718-
585-1433.
DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY AFFAIRS in central Brooklyn. Experience
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events planning required. B.A. and M.P.A. desired. Please send resume
and cover letter to: 572 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11225, Attn:
Personnel Search.
COMMUNITY DEVROPMENT SPECIALIST. Affordable Housing Network, NJ
seeks highly qualified person to assist CBOs engaged in comprehensive
community building process. Skills: organization development, commu-
nity organizing, community planning, community development. 10 years'
experience working with CBOs. Statewide travel/flexible work hours.
Competitive salary/benefits. Martha lamar, AHN, PO Box 1746,
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FUND DEVELOPER PIT or F/T. Manage all fund development initiatives.
Write proposals, oversee direct mailing. Experience in fundraising and
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homeless people empowered for work and new life. Send resume &
salary history to: Father David Kirk, Emmaus/Harlem, PO Box 1177,
NYC 10035.
BUSINESS MANAGER. Directly responsible for leadership and manage-
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& fiscal familiarity with government funding & non-profit administration
important. Will be working in the context of empowering community of
the homeless in Harlem. Send resume to: Father David Kirk,
Emmaus/Harlem, PO Box 1177, NYC 10035.
COUNSELORS for empowering community of 62 homeless people in
Harlem. Good human relation skills, crisis intervention, people devel-
opment planning. Send resume to: Father David Kirk, Emmaus/Harlem,
PO Box 1177, NYC 10035.
ORGANIZER. Troy Rehabilitation and Improvement Program (TRIP) is a
community-based organization providing affordable housing opportuni-
ties in inner-city Troy, NY (near the Capital District). TRIP is seeking an
experienced community organizer to identity and train resident leaders,
identity issues, and organize neighborhood associations. Excellent ver-
JUNE/JULY 1997
bal/written skills, community organizing experience, self-starter, flexi-
ble hours, Spanish-speaking a plus. Apply to TRIP, 415 River Street,
Troy, NY, 12180 by June 20th.
DIRECTOR OF TENANT AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZING. Good Old lower East
Side (GOlES) is a lower East Side community-based organization com-
mitted to tenants' rights, immigrants' rights, welfare rights and job cre-
ation. GOlES is seeking an experienced organizer to direct new and
existing work in the areas of tenant and community organizing, political
education and leadership development. Responsibilities include orga-
nizing direct action campaigns with residents, focusing on housing, wel-
fare and immigrants' rights; expanding upon existing organizing efforts
of tenants in privately-owned and HPD /TIL buildings, leadership train-
ing, supervising a staff of three and contract reporting. Requirements:
Thorough knowledge of landlord-tenant law, extensive organizing expe-
rience, excellent writing and oral communication skills, computer skills.
Bilingual (Spanish/English) a very strong plus. Send resume and cover
letter discussing your approach to community organizing to: Executive
Director, GOlES, 525 East 6th St., NYC 10009 Fax: 212-533-8126.
URBAN HOUSING SPECIALIST P /T. Counsel landlords and tenants on
housing matters; assist tenants in the application for and participation
in housing entitlement programs; identity and target buildings for both
HPD and DHCR housing programs; assist in the planning for the
Inwood/Washington Heights communities; counsel prospective home-
owners on homeownership issues; conversant on residential mortgage
loan financing and loan packaging; knowledgeable of issues related to
housing and community development; familiar with the
Inwood/ Washington Heights communities; fluent in both English and
Spanish. Must write well and communicate effectively. Must be com-
puter literate. Applicant must have BA degree in related field and/or
one year experience in housing and/or community development. Part-
time, 20 hours/week. Pays $12,OOO/year. Please forward resume and
cover letter to: Director, Inwood Preservation Corporation, 5000
Broadway, Suite A, New York, NY 10034.
COMMUNITY LIAISON SPECIALIST PIT. Counsel landlords and tenants on
housing matters; assist tenants in the application for and participation
in housing entitlement programs; identity and target buildings for both
HPD and DHCR housing programs. Strong ability to organize and sup-
port tenant and block associations. Assist in planning for the
Inwood/Washington Heights communities. Represent agency at con-
ferences, seminars and workshops. Knowledgeable of issues related
to housing and community development. Familiar with the
Inwood/Washington Heights communities. Fluent in Spanish and
English. Must write well and communicate effectively. Must be com-
puter literate. Applicant must have a BA degree in related field and/or
one year experience in housing and/or community development. Part-
time, 20 hours/week. Pays $13,OOO/year. Please forward resume and
cover letter to: Director, Inwood Preservation Corporation, 5000
Broadway, Suite A, New York, NY 10034.
The lawyers Committee for Human Rights has 3000 square feet of newly
built-out space available for sub-lease from August 1, 1997. The offices at
333 Seventh Avenue are designed with workspaces for 1(}'11 people plus a
small conference room. For info call Kathy Jones at 212-629-6170, ext. 155.
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR CAREER PLANNING to develop programs and counsel
students and graduates of leading public service law school on a range of career
development issues. Baccalaureate Degree, six years of related experience, excellent
organizational, writing, computer literacy and communication skills required; law
degree and public interest experience preferred. Competitive salary (range $39,003-
$62,394) commensurate with experience. Write for full description or submit
application and resume to Franklin Siegel , CUNY Law School , 65-2 I Main Street,
Flushing, NY 11367.
CUNY Law School is a Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer
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ering Paulo Freire
By Maxine Greene
little more than a month ago, I joined the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and a group of old friends for
lunch in the Village. We had been called together by New York University fIlmmaker George Stoney,
who is making a documentary of Paulo's work in North America. Paulo's wife Nita was there with her
lO-year-old grandson, who fed his own
questions into our conversation about
literacy, critical thought and cultural
change. It was typical of Paulo to avoid
repressing anyone's questions; he
thought to do so was to diminish the
humanity of the questioner, even if the
questioner were a child.
Paulo died of a heart attack in Sao
Paulo a week or two later, and it is still
hard to believe this small, vital, soft-spoken and generous man
is no longer with us to keep us awake and reaching towards
what he called "a lovelier world." People from the places where
Paulo worked, including Brazil, Chile, Geneva, Mozambique
and El Salvador, are marking his loss, along with many others
from places like New York City, where low-income people,
teachers and activists have been deeply influenced by his teach-
ings.
They are summoning up the multiple ways in which he liber-
ated them to make their own sense of things. Paulo re-imagined
adult education. His philosophy and method of teaching handed
poor people from Central America to Appalachia to the South
Bronx the keys they needed to leam from one another, to unlock
their own insights, their own power to identify and describe the
social and economic forces that kept them disenfranchised. With
this power, they could move collectively to challenge the status
quo. In New York, many grassroots projects-from welfare and
homeless rights organizing to the politicization of low-income
CUNY students-began with the teachings of Paulo Freire.
"To exist, humanly," he wrote, "is to name the world, to
change it. Once named, the world in its tum reappears to the
namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. Humans
are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection."
His remarkable capacity to break through the "customs of
silence" and to move from idea to action aroused my interest
when 1 fust read his book, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," and
heard him speak to Mexican teachers in Cuemavaca years ago.
I have, for a long time, been teaching social and educational
philosophy, along with philosophies of the arts, at Teachers
College, Columbia University; and I always believed I was
working in the same tradition-Deweyan, existential, and neo-
Marxist-as Paulo Freire. I never, however, was able to move
people, be they community workers or teachers or student lead-
ers, to infuse their practice with their
philosophy in the way Paulo did. Like
most of those who came in contact
with him, I am still trying.
On one memorable occasion, he
came to my class in social philosophy.
I especially remember a student asking
him what he would say to the homeless
if he spent the night with them in a
shelter. He said he would be too shy to
say anything. But then, aware that there was a deeper question
underlying the one she had asked-a question he wanted to
enable her to articulate-he somehow moved her to begin nam-
ing the world in which homelessness existed.
As always, he resisted the "narrative sickness" that moves
so many well-meaning teachers simply to transmit information.
Before long, members of the class were not only posing criti-
cal questions. They were asking what their naming demanded
of them here in the city. Paulo did not tell them, but the ensu-
ing conversation raised their consciousness and planted the
seeds of action to counter the dehumanization of homelessness.
For Paulo Freire, to struggle against oppression is to pursue
one's own humanity, to create oneself, to choose oneself as a
human being. This can only occur by means of mutual activity
on the part of teachers and learners, communities and centers of
social action, the oppressed in the cities and the organizers or
social workers committed to social justice.
It is never a question of using one's education or privilege to
lead the oppressed out of darkness. It is to develop a pedagogy
that will enable the poor, the homeless, the oppressed to over-
come the image of themselves fabricated by their oppressors as
helpless illiterates, devoid of the wit or the vitality needed to
take action. Freire's pedagogy of liberation makes it possible for
all sorts of people to believe themselves capable of interpreting
their world and transforming it.
He had in mind all the hitherto silent men and women in
communities across the world, coming together in a new kind of
hope. Paulo is no longer here in his humility and eloquence and
courage; but those who heard him-and can still hear him-are
alive to achieve their visions, to render a reality which is human-
ized and just.
Maxine Greene is professor emeritus at Teachers College.
~ .................................................................................................. ...
CITY LIMITS
JUNE/JULY 1997
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