\

\
ERS UNITE: THE AFL-TKO CITY LAND DEAL SELLS OUT THE BRONX
EDITORIAL
KEEPING THE BOAT AFLOAT
IF ONLY IT WERE REAL VICTORY.
We're damned lucky that Joe Bruno and the
State Senate joined the Assembly in May to over-
ride Governor Pataki's veto of the legislature's
budget. Otherwise, New York City (and munic-
ipalities statewide) would have been forced to
decimate services. We're not talking a few fire-
houses and school aides, but also swimming
pools, libraries, senior programs-things that
make a place livable for most residents. All were
on the chopping block: All so Pataki could prove
his love to the national Republican Party and its
agenda to shrink the public sector to a rudiment
whose sole use is to bolster the private sector.
But in a larger sense, victory goes to the
governor-or if not to Pataki personally, then
to the economic agenda he and his Washing-
ton allies are pushing nationally. The state leg-
islature needed to pass tax hikes, not simply
because New York in the past decade has
sharply cut taxes (including, idiotically, elimi-
nating the commuter tax) , but also because it
became clear (duh!) that the state economy,
driven by New York City and Wall Street,
could no longer generate as much revenue as
during the wild end of the 1990s.
Alas-as economists keep strolling from the
academy to the op-eds to warn us-it's very
doubtful that Congress' tax cuts will revive the
economy. In New York as elsewhere, we're left
to taxing our own shrinking economies and
stagnant household incomes to keep the gov-
ernment services we still have and need.
New York City, of course, remains in the
woods. According to City Comptroller Bill
Thompson, we're facing a $2.9 billion deficit
for next year, and even with the mayor's cuts to
jobs and services, we could be $618 million
short for this one.
Clearly, we can only fight back. How,
though, do those of us who work locally act
nationally? The answer-there's no choice-is
to keep working locally. The Joe Bruno experi-
ence is instructive. He bucked Pataki because
budget cuts hit his constituents hard, and the
good people of Renssalaer revolted against
higher property taxes for crummy schools.
Pataki has always been good at driving wedges:
berween upstate and downstate, Republicans
and Democrats. Bruno was his key ally-until
Cover photo by Seth Oinnerman. Fictional enactment of child protective investigator visiting a home.
now. Today we're in the same boat, as sudden-
ly, rwo seemingly disparate parts of the state
now share the same crises. The more that local-
ities can channel common interests into com-
mon action, the better we'll all be at weather-
ing this terrible storm.
* * *
It's with extreme admiration that City Lim-
its says farewell to Associate Editor Matt Pacen-
za, who among many other gifts could write as
compellingly about tax liens and the low
income housing tax credit as he did about the
plight of poor tenants and workfare partici-
pants. After reporting from Guatemala this
summer, Matt will be moving into daily jour-
nalism. We'll miss you, Matt.
Filling Matt's shoes will be Cassi Feldman,
who covered housing and social services for the
San Francisco Bay Guardian before returning to
her native New York. Welcome back!
-Alyssa Katz
Editor
The Center for an Urban Future
Centej {or an
F
Utroan
u ure
the sister organization of City Limits
www.nycfuture.org
Combining City Limits' zest for investigative reporting with thorough policy
analysis, the Center for an Urban Future is regularly influencing New York's
decision makers with fact-driven stUdies about policy issues that are important to
all five boroughs and to New Yorkers of all socio-economic levels.
Go to our website or contact us to obtain any of our recent studies:
., Rearranging the Deck Chairs? New York City's Workforce System At The Brink (May 2003)
., Labor Gains: How Union-Affiliated Training is Transforming New York's Workforce Landscape (March 2003)
., Epidemic Neglect: How Weak Infrastructure and Lax Planning Hinder New York's Response to AIDS (February 2003)
., The Creative Engine: How Arts and Culture are Fueling Growth in NYC's Neighborhoods (November 2002)
., Bumpy Skies: JFK, laGuardia Fared Worse than most U.S. Airports after 9/11 and still Face Structural
Threats to Future Competitiveness (October 2002)
To obtain a report, get on our mailing list or sign up for our free e-mail policy updates,
contact Research Director Jonathan Bowles at jbowles@nycfuture.org or (212) 479-3347.
City Limits and the Center for an Urban Future rely on the generous support of their readers and advertisers, as well as the following funders: The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, The Child
Welfare Fund, The Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, Open Society Institute, The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, The Scherman Foundaton, JPMorganChase, The Annie E. Casey
Foundation, The Booth Ferris Foundation, The New York Community Trust, The Taconic Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Ford Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Ira W. DeCamp
Foundation, LlSC, Deutsche Bank, M& T Bank, The Citigroup Foundation, New York Foundation.
CONTENTS
14 COLOSSAL WASTE
Dumping garbage is getting a lot more expensive, while
recycling is getting more and more affordable. How the Department
of Sanitation's bad math is throwing millions of dollars into dumps.
By Ruth Ford
16 HOT TRASH
Don't you dare call it incineration, but it may
be time for a sizzling trash solution.
By Larry Greenemeier
18 CLOSE COMPANY
The private company that handles New York City's billion-dollar
property tax collection business tried to make a deal with a
landlord-just as he was in court for mismanaging his buildings.
By Matt Pacenza
22 SAFE AND SOUND
Last year, city social workers entered homes nearly 56,000 times to
investigate child abuse and neglect allegations-but only rarely
could they give families more than trouble. Can we make New
York's kids safer by turning troubled parents into partners?
By Rachel Blustain
5 FRONTLINES: BROOKLYN'S $4 RIDE ... NYC'S NO FLY ZONE ... DUBYA'S
DIVIDEND DEAD ... BYTES TO BAGELS ... LABOR'S KNOCKOUT STRATEGY ... CHURCH TO
BOOT FARMERS? ... KING RIDES TO THE RESCUE
10 WORK IN PROJECTS
The New York City Housing Authority finally commits to
hiring its own residents, but a coalition of tenants, unions
and community groups finds that a working partnership
is the hardest thing to build.
By Ron Feemster
The Future of Public Life
29 THE BIG IDEA
Beware the Bush administration's plan to block grant federal
foster care money. By Paul Fain
JULY/AUGUST 2003
32 CITY LIT
Reckoning with Homelessness, by Kim Hopper.
Reviewed by Bob Roberts.
34 MAKING CHANGE
A new wave of literacy teachers is teaching immigrants
not just to read and write-but to be hell raising citizens, too.
By Debbie Nathan
36 NYC INC.
Government should help employers hang on to their workers during
tough times-it's certainly cheaper than unemployment checks.
By Bruce G. Herman
2 EDITORIAL
39 JOB ADS 47 PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY
50 OFFICE OF THE CITY VISIONARY
3
LETTERS
NONPROFIT, NON-ACTION
The real "dirty little secret of affordable hous-
ing" ["Invisible Men," May 2003) is not simply
that the contractors do not pay their workers,
but that the Community Development Organi-
zations know about it and do nothing to correct
the abuse. As Brad Lander said so eloquently,
"It's extremely rare for a nonprofit to act as a
check or balance on a contractor."
The owner of the project can easily correct
the abuse of workers by simply monitoring
their job and including minimal language in
the contract that requires apprenticeship and
community hiring. Community economic
development should be more than lip service to
the residents where the housing is being
built-and the underpaid workers who are
building it.
Richard E. Dwyer
The New York City District Council of Carpenters
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
I just read "Leave Home Without It,"
[May 2003) by Hillary Russ, about how Pak-
istanis and Muslims have to verify employ-
ment and income to maintain credit with
American Express.
Well, the poor Pakistanis and Muslims are
not the only people who have to go through
this. Because those groups are in the spotlight
right now, it is a popular and opportune time
to expose a business practice known as the
"know your customer rule. "
Sounds like Russ thinks that because these
people are Pakistani and Muslim they do not
have to verify employment, nor have sufficient
earned income, to do business with a major
U.S. fmancial institution-yet they expect to
be given credit privileges and trust.
I'm a WASP, and I just faxed the last two
years of my tax returns to my banker-whom
I've known for over 20 years-so I can main-
tain the credit I have. I'm not complaining.
Maybe it is because I am not a minority being
discriminated against!
It is never too late for companies to realize
that they should check the credit worthiness of
their customers. Because bad debt cost every-
one money.
Hilary Russ replies:
Cal Herman
New Orleans, LA
Banks and credit card agencies do check their
accountho/ders' identification and financial status-
this "know your customer" rule, however, generally
applies to new accounts or unusual tmnsactions. But
the people I profiled had already verified their jobs
and i n c o m e ~ just like everyone else opening and
maintaining an account. And they clAim they made
no charges or withdrawals that would have put the
"know your customer" rule into effect.
GOT
TALENT?
4
Put it to good use.
City Limits magazine
Seeks volunteers with
Copywriting, Marketing, and
Public Relation skills
to work on various projects
throughout the summer
Email your interest to: sharris@citylimits.org
CITY LIMITS
Volume XXVIII Number 7
City Limits is published ten times per year, monthly except bi-
monthly issues in July/August and September/October, by City Um-
its Community Information Service, Inc., a nonprofit organization
devoted to disseminating information concerning neighborhood
revitalization.
Publisher: Kim Nauer
Associate Publisher: Susan Harris
Editor: Alyssa Katz
Managing Editor: Tracie McMillan
Senior Editor: Jill Grossman
Senior Editor: Kai Wright
Senior Editor: Debbie Nathan
nauer@citylimits.org
sharris@citylimits.org
alyssa@citylimits.org
mcmillan@citylimits.org
jgrossman@citylimits.org
kai@citylimits.org
debbie@citylimits.org
Associate Editor: Matt Pacenza matt@citylimits.org
Contri buting Editors: Neil F. Carlson, Wendy Davis,
Geoffrey Gray, Kemba Johnson, Nora
McCarthy, Robert Neuwirth, Hilary Russ
DeSign Direction: Hope Forstenzer
Illustrator: Sabrina Jones
Photographers: Amy Bolger, Margaret Keady, Gregory P. Mango
Contributing Photo Editor: Joshua Zuckerman
Contributing Illustration Editor: Noah Scalin
Interns: Carolyn Bigda, Marley Seaman, William Wichert
Proofreaders: Sandy Socolar, MaryAnne LoVerme, Lawrence
Seville, Tom Stabile
General EMail Address: citylimits@citylimits.org
CENTER FOR AN URBAN FUTURE:
Director: Neil Kleiman
Research Director: Jonathan Bowles
Project Director: David J. Fischer
Deputy Director: Robin Keegan
Research Associate: Tara Colton
neil@nycfuture.org
jbowles@nycfuture.org
djfischer@nycfuture.org
rkeegan@nycfuture.org
tcolton@nycfuture.org
Editor, NYC Inc: Andrea Coller McAuliff
Interns: Noemi Altman, Nicholas Johnson
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Beverly Cheuvront, Partnership for the Homeless
Ken Emerson
Mark Winston Griffith, Central Brooklyn Partnership
Celia Irvine, Legal Aid Society
Andrew Reicher, UHAB
Tom Robbins, Journalist
Ira Rubenstein, Center for Economic and Environmental
Partnership, Inc.
Karen Trella, Common Ground Community
Pete Williams, Consultant
' Affiliations for identification only.
SPONSORS:
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and Environmental Development
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CITY LIMITS
"
FRONT LINES
Brooklyn Transfer
NO NEW YORKER WAS HAPPY when the subway fare rose to $2 last month.
But for commuters in central Brooklyn, the hike--compounded by a
decades-old situation there-has nearly doubled the cost of getting
around the borough and into Queens.
For years, commuters have had to pay twice when they transfer from
the No.3 train at Junius Street in East New York to the L train at Livo-
nia Avenue, just down the block. The elevated walkway between the sta-
tions burned down, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has
yet to rebuild it.
So riders switch trains by exiting one station, crossing an outdoor
pedestrian bridge-and paying a second fare.
Not only is the trip costly, but the poorly lit and rarely patrolled
walkway has been a regular site for rapes and robberies in the past.
While crime has dropped in recent years, the bridge's reputation still
rums people away.
"Most people avoid the transfer point because of the fact that it's so dan-
gerous," says Randy Hudson of the United Community Centers, a local
nonprofit community group that has been pushing the MTA to create a
free and safe enclosed transfer point for the last two years. To avoid trans-
ferring at that station, he says, commuters instead make the free transfer
farther down the line at Broadway Junction, leading to overcrowding.
JULY I AUGUST 2003
While the fare hike has given the group's campaign a boost-they
have collected 2,500 signatures over the last several months-the MTA
insists it is still not worth the millions it would cost to build an elevat-
ed walkway. The agency estimates that only 3,000 people would make
the transfer there each day. To make it worth their while, agency offi-
cials say ridership would have to reach close to 5,000, as it has
at Bleecker Street in the Village, where the MTA plans to invest
$25 million to build a transfer point between the uptown 6 and the
F and V trains.
East New York residents and elected officials insist more riders will use
the stations once improvements are made. "It's just a question of neglect
and ignoring our area," says City Councilrnember Charles Barron, who
plans to schedule public hearings on the maner.
In the meantime, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz isn't
taking any chances on the MTA. In January, he asked the U.S. Depart-
ment of Transportation to fund the transfer improvements through the
Transportation Equity Act for the 21 st Century. His office still hasn't
heard back.
"The whole area's out of touch with the day, " says Hudson. "The area
looks like it's still back in the 1950s. "
-William Wichert
5
FRONT LINES
Innocent
passengers told
they won't fly.
By David Jones
LAST FALL, A MUSLIM businessman arrived at
JFK International Airport ready to travel to
Orlando. At the gate, a Delta Air Lines agent
told him there was a "computer glitch" in his
reservation and that it would take 40 minutes
to fix. Until then, the agent told him, he could
not board the flight.
Within a few minutes, uniformed police
arrived. He spent the next two hours and 45
minutes in humiliating silence while a local
police officer stood watch next to him in a
waiting area. Police and airline officials never
clearly explained his detention, prohibited
him from using an airport restroom and, of
course, forced him to miss his flight.
When police finally released him, they said he
could return the next day to catch a flight to Flori-
da. He did so, and was again detained, this time
for 40 minutes, before finally boarding a plane.
This man's story is one of dozens that the
Electronic Privacy Information Center
(EPIC), a Washington-based group, received
6
Get On The Bus, Gus
from the federal Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) in April in response to
a lawsuit demanding details on a federal watch
list, and on how and why airport officials
decide to detain certain passengers.
"It really is profoundly disturbing that the
government would operate a list like this in such
a clearly shoddy manner," says Mihir Kshirsagar,
EPIC's policy analyst. In another situation out-
lined in the written complaints the feds sent
EPIC, an Arab-American former U.S. Navy offi-
cer said he was stopped and aggressively searched
along with his son and grandson. In the case of
the man bound for Orlando, he later learned his
name was similar to one on the federal watch list.
Federal investigators have maintained lists
of people considered a threat to airline securi-
ry for years. In 1996, TSA created the Com-
puter Assisted Passenger Prescreening System
(CAPPS) to flag passengers whose names
appear on lists of suspected terrorists or suspi-
cious characters for extra scrutiny before
boarding commercial flights.
The agency admits the existing system is
not perfect. Sometimes, say TSA officials, peo-
ple may face additional scrutiny because they
have names similar to those on the no-fly list.
"We do understand that sometimes those
databases have errors in them, " says TSA
spokesperson Brian Turmail.
Now the feds are out to change the public
perception that passengers are arbitrarily
searched-and their solution may create even
more controversy.
Since March, TSA has been working with
Delta at three undisclosed U.S. airports to test
a screening system that will run a background
check on every passenger who buys a ticket.
Under CAPPS II, anyone buying an airline
ticket will be asked for his or her name, address,
date of birth, and telephone number. The system
will run that information through government
and commercial databases that could include
banking, credit and criminal records to deter-
mine whether the passenger can board the flight.
The agency has a lot of convincing to do,
though. First, there is the financial justifica-
tion. Before Congress agrees to make the $35
million investment in a full-blown rollout of
CAPPS II, the Office of Management and
Budget has suggested TSA make a "valid busi-
ness case" that the new system will enhance
government's abiliry to detect terrorists.
In the meantime, privacy advocates like
EPIC and the American Civil Liberties Union
are taking things into their own hands. They
are part of a coalition-which also includes
conservative groups like the Eagle Forum and
the Christian Coalition-demanding a full
accounting of how CAPPS II will work. The
ACLU in northern California recently sued
the feds for details on how the no-fly list is
compiled, and organization officials are col-
lecting complaints from other passengers who
could form the basis for additional litigation.
Barbara Olshansky hopes these effortS suc-
ceed. Over the past 18 months, National
Guard troops have stopped and searched
her-forcing her to drop her pants--on three
separate occasions in New York and Washing-
ton, D.C. airports. "Everyone who got
through the gate got to see my lovely under-
wear," Olshansky recalls.
As assistant legal director of the New York-
based Center for Constitutional Rights, Olshan-
sky believes it's not just a coincidence that she and
several of her colleagues have been stopped. The
center has actively challenged the Bush adminis-
tration's detention of hundreds of suspected
Afghan and AI Qaeda fighters at Guantanamo
Bay and has fued briefs against secret immigration
hearings in New Jersey and Michigan.
"Are they using national secutiry to harass
people?" asks Olshansky. "It just makes me
really wonder. "
David Jones is a fellow for the Independent Press
Association's George Washington Williams Fel-
lowship for Journalists of Color.
CITY LIMITS
-=====Mfl# ff+6:===-
Saved by the Bill
AFFORDABLE HOUSING proponents are breathing easier
since the House and Senate passed a tax bill on May 23
that left out a dividend tax provision which would have
threatened the development of low-income apartments
in New York and nationwide.
For months, housing advocates and elected officials-
including Mayor Bloomberg-have been lobbying
against a Bush administration proposal to let corporations
pay their shareholders tax-free dividends. Under that plan,
if corporations used tax credits to discount their income
taxes, their dividends would still have been fully taxed.
This provision, many feared, would make tax credits for
affordable housing unattractive or downright worthless.
"Essentially, it would have killed the program, " said
David Gasson, vice president of Boston Capital Corpo-
ration, which sells housing tax credits to corporations.
But in a last minute about-face last week, President
Bush abandoned his anempt to end taxes on corporate
dividends, instead adopting a Republican House plan
that merely reduces those taxes, paving the way for incen-
tives for affordable housing construction to continue-at
least for now.
Enacted in 1986, the Low Income Housing Tax Cred-
it program gives $1.75 in tax credits annually per capita
to each state; in New York in 2001, that worked out to
$33.2 million. New York's housing agencies-the state
Division of Housing and Community Renewal and the
city Department of Housing Preservation and Develop-
ment-award those credits to nonprofit housing devel-
opers, which in turn sell them to corporations for about
90 cents on the dollar. Those companies then use them
to pay their federal tax bills.
The money raised each year helps build more than 40
percent of all affordable apartments: 115,000 nation-
wide, and 3,000 in New York City.
Eliminating the dividend tax, some economists predict-
ed, would have caused the number of affordable units built
to drop by 40,000 each year. According to a report by the
accounting firm Ernst & Young, investors would stop buy-
ing stock in corporations that use housing tax credits, pre-
ferring other corporations that paid full taxes on income
and thus offered tax-free dividends. As a result, the market
value of housing tax credits would fall . This would lead to
decreased financing, which would make many affordable
housing properties economically unfeasible.
With dividend taxes still around, though-they will
range from 15 to five percent depending on an investor's
income-"we're pleased with the new law," said a staffer
at the National Council of State Housing Agencies. But,
warns Boston Capital's Gasson, Bush feels strongly about
abolishing the so-called double taxation on dividends, so
"the White House will bring up the proposal again." If
that happens, supporters of housing tax credits will have
to revisit the issue.
-Debbie Nathan
JULY/AUGUST 2003
FRONTLINES
F I RSTHAN D
Waiting Online
My daughter's godmother lives in Queens. When I told her I wanted to come here from
Peru, she said, "Don't! It's not what you think!" I used to read Fortune. I thought I'd get rich
from dot-coms and bring my family in a year.
I was wrong.
In Lima I had a small computer company. Then Fujimori became president. The computer
industry got more competitive and the economy was in crisis. My clients couldn't afford me
anymore and my income was a tenth what it had been. My wife and I were fighting over money.
I came to New York on a tourist visa in 2000, and quickly saw that the godmother was right.
The only job I could get was in a bakery, feeding bagels into an oven. It was 120 degrees
in the room, 60 hours a week, $350. Some workers started organizing a union. The owner
learned I'd signed and sped up my work so I'd quit. The union lost. Now I'm at another fac-
tory. I send $500 a month to Peru.
I was 33 when I left. My son was 1112 and my daughter was five. I call them every other
day, but my son doesn't know me. My daughter gives me advice: "Daddy, don't go looking
for problems. Stay healthy."
I was having chest pains. The doctor says it's from stress. He says, "Try to bring your fam-
ily here. Have fun." At movies I cry for no reason. I grew up thinking men don't cry, but I've
changed here. Now I think crying is OK. And there are people in worse situations than mine.
I've got ideas for websites. I wanted to post my life story and people would contribute
money for me to either bring my family here or to go back to Peru. But how do I get paid with-
out being identified? I'm undocumented: I can't even open a bank account without a social
security card. But I'll find a way to start a business selling computer training videos.
I got my latest website idea from seeing how men here have no idea what to say to attract
a woman. In Spanish, you say things like, "St. Peter must have fallen asleep, because the
angels are fleeing heaven!" Here people say, "Hey baby! " I'm going to have a site to post good
things. At first it will be free. Later, I'll charge. -Martin B.
7
FRONT LINES
In This Corner ... the Teamsters
Boxing buffs
push to create
the sport's
first union.
By Geoffrey Gray
FOR THEIR FIRST FIGHT, Danny and Walter
Kane went to the Aqueduct racetrack with their
father and watched Roberto Duran pummel
Sugar Ray Leonard over 15 rounds on the big
screen. In the crowd, Duran's fans, dressed in
white suits, walked the aisles booking bets.
There was cigar smoke. Pushing, shoving. Mass
testosterone. The Kane boys were hooked.
Today, Danny is president of the Teamsters
Local 202 in the Bronx. Walter is a labor attor-
ney who represents the city's Teamsters. Togeth-
er, they are behind one of the biggest efforts to
unionize prizefighters, some of the only athletes
still working without an organization.
"The boxing industry has been racing
downhill fast," says Danny. "Fighters need rep-
resentation more then ever. "
As individual contractors, fighters often have
to battle for highly taxed prize money and
against uncompromising promoters to scrape
8
together a living. While silk-pajama fighters like
Roy Jones, Jr., and Lennox Lewis have cashed in
on unprecedented purses recently, experts esti-
mate that most of the country's "journeyman"
fighters continue to slug for the same contracts
they did 20 years ago, at about .$100 or $150 a
round-without long-term health insurance
(promoters only cover them for the night of the
fight), a pension or a guarantee of legal repre-
sentation should their promoters rip them off
"We have no one to stand behind us, " said
two-time world champ contender Raul Frank
during a recent workout at Gleason's Gym in
Brooklyn. He relies on his wife's job for health
insurance, and welcomes a union. "The rich
promoters keep on getting richer; the fighters
are still penniless. "
Bruce Silverglade, owner of Gleason's, says
Frank is one of the luckier ones. During his
years in the business, Silverglade has watched
fighters, many of them on welfare, share Med-
icaid cards to get health benefits. If a union
needs a place to organize, Silverglade offers
space at Gleason's, which claims 700 members.
"We need this in boxing, " he says. "Some-
times a kid will sign his life away to a promot-
er for $1,000. Everyone always takes the
money. Many of these guys have never seen
$1,000 in their lives. "
With this in mind, the Kanes teamed up
with Brownsville-born former champ Eddie
"The Flame" Mustafa Muhammad in March
to create the Joint Association of Boxers GAB),
the first ever trade union for boxers.
The effort has quickly built momenrurn. In
early May, James Hoffa, Jr.'s 1.4 million-member
International Brotherhood of Teamsters took
them on as an affiliate. "Every other sport is
organized; now the boxers will be organized," said
Hoffa, an avid sports fan, at a press conference
announcing the parmership.
By the middle of May, the organizers
claimed to have more than 200 signed union
cards, and some big name supporters, most
notably the great Muhammad Ali , who wrote
to Mustafa Muhammad: "I believe that a box-
ers union would greatly improve conditions in
which boxers often find themselves. "
With a dozen gyms in New York City alone
drawing hundreds of members each, there are
still a lot of boxers to reach out to-and a lot
of details to sort out.
The biggest issue: how the union will support
itself "We're discussing a number of options,"
says Walter, such as funneling a portion of the
fighters' contracts to the union. "If you're making
$100 a round now, and we get you $110, I don't
think anyone will whine about giving the union
$2 of that," he says. Other union perks, he adds,
would include "legal representation and political
juice," and job assistance from the Teamsters
should a fighter decide to quit the sport.
The union organizers also hope the plan will
help revive the entire sport. In the 1920s, boxing
was second only to baseball as the country's most
popular pastime, and New York City was its
Mecca. As often as three nights a week, fans
would fill now-forgotten and defunct arenas like
the 23,000-seat Bronx Velodrome in Marble Hill
and the 1O,000-seat Coney Island Velodrome.
Now, there are only a handful of fights in
New York each year, and they are poorly organ-
ized events often tucked away in the basement
ballrooms of hotels.
JAB's creators believe their efforts can make
the sport viable again-particularly if the Team-
sters' image induces corporate sponsors to pump
more money into boxing, as they expect.
"The industry's in the shitter," says New
York-based promoter Lou DiBella. "A union
certainly can't hurt anything."
The organized boxers expect to face their
first test-judged by ticket sales-in July, when
unbeaten junior welterweight prospect Ishe
Smith becomes the first Teamster to step into
the ring, wearing the JAB logo on his trunks.
"Trust me, there's gonna be a lot of Team-
sters in that crowd," says Walter Kane. "We got
a big family. "
CITY LIMITS

A Market Sale
THE APPLES, PEARS and peaches come from a
farm in Pennsylvania; the collards and calallo
from a local green thumb whose garden was
once a rotting urban brownfield. They make
their way into pots and onto plates across Cen-
tral Brooklyn, thanks to the East New York
Farmer's Market, the only source of fresh pro-
duce for blocks along New Lots Avenue.
But with vacant space at a premium in New
York, many of the four-year-old market's backers
are worried that its future may be in jeopardy. For
the past few months, state Assemblymember
Diane Gordon has been expressing her desire to
put more substantive development in the mar-
ket's place, potentially including a community
center sponsored by her True Worship church.
"I would like to see a multicultural center
there," Gordon says, adding that many other
ideas for economic development on the land
were being tossed around. "We have to sit
down and figure how this space can be best
used to serve the community."
Meanwhile, the managers of the market, which
will operate every Saturday this summer starting
June 7, hope to expand their business by replacing
the outdoor stalls with a year-round building that
would allow them to open shop every day and
offer space to a variety of new vendors.
"We want to make the market grow into a
youth entrepreneurial center," says Ojeda Hall-

A King is Crowned
THE PRAXIS board of directors named a new
executive director in May-and he is no
stranger to helping fix housing finance schemes.
Longtime Democratic Party man Charlie
King has set lofty promises for the troubled
AIDS housing group's future. "I plan to make
Praxis the poster child" for supportive hous-
ing, he says.
This as Attorney General Elliot Spitzer's
chariry bureau investigates questionable spend-
ing practices made by Praxis' former leaders, G.
Sterling Zinsmeyer and Gordon Duggins. The
two resigned in April, as the U.S. Attorney's
Office and the Department of Housing and
Urban Development also looked into poten-
tially improper spending habits.
An attorney by trade, 44-year-old King has
some experience cleaning up the mess left by mis-
managed housing funds. As director of HUD's
JULY / AUGUST 2003
Phillips, executive vice president of the Local
Development Corporation of East New York,
which manages the market.
Operating year-round would provide local
residents with a needed service, adds local mar-
ket manager Salirna Jones, noting that her com-
munity has been starved of nutrition-rich pro-
duce for years. ''We have a real food security
issue here," she says.
So far the LDC has secured $500,000 from
the federal Department of Health and Human
Services for the expansion, and the group is
now trying to raise another $2 million.
For now, though, anything is possible for
the property, which is owned by the city. "It's
all open game," says James Tillman, chair of
New York regional office under Andrew Cuomo
from 2000 to 2001, he was part of the team that
tried to patch up the 203(k) scandal, which lefr
nearly 600 apartment buildings in disrepair after
many nonprofits-in cahoots with crooked
appraisers, mortgage lenders and real estate huck-
sters-took advantage of government-guaranteed
loans. While these homes are slowly being sold
and fixed up, HUD's role in the recovery during
King's tenure received mixed reviews.
As for Praxis, King says that during his time
on the job he never came across the group,
which has received more than $10 million
from HUD over the last nine years. In fact, he
says he first heard of Praxis when a friend on
the board suggested he apply for the job.
He did know Zinsmeyer, and is also friend-
ly with Spitzer-through politics, King's true
passion. In 1998, and again in 2002, King ran
for lieutenant governor, most recently on
Andrew Cuomo's ticket. While he should be
kept busy at Praxis and with a class action law-
suit he's filed on behalf of parents charging the
city with violating the No Child Left Behind
FRONTLINES
the land use committee for Community Board
5. He notes that neither group has submitted
a formal proposal.
That said, adds Tillman, a longtime friend
of Gordon's, "The farmer's market isn't using
the land to its full potential. Nobody's anti-
market, but it's wasted space."
For now, City Councilmember Charles Bar-
ron has yet to weigh in. A frequent visitor to the
market, Barron remembers recently picking up
onions, carrots and a framed picture of The Last
Supper in which Jesus is African-American. He
forsees all parties using the lot for mixed-use
development. "It's not one or the other," he
says. "There's room for combined visions here."
-Geoffrey Gray
Act, he does have other aspirations: If Spitzer
runs for governor in 2006, King says he will
campaign to replace him as attorney general.
In the meantime, he stressed, the group is
"cooperating fully" with Praxis investigations.
"What people may not realize is that Praxis
houses people who are in the most desperate
state of their lives," he says. "Every day we have
miracles. I'm here to ensure that those miracles
get fulfilled."
He has a lot to learn about the group first,
though. Asked about the recent sale of Praxis'
most lucrative asset, the Greenpoint Hotel in
Brooklyn, which the group's attorneys say net-
ted a $900,000 profit, King asked, "Where's
the Greenpoint Hotel?"
Still, King says he's committed to making
Praxis more effective. He plans to spend nights
in Praxis shelters. He's flirting with the idea of
drug testing his employees. He plans to place
stricter financial controls in place.
"My goal is to make Praxis the most successful
group like this in the city," he says. ''And I'm
going to ensure that it happens." -Geoffrey Gray
9
INSIDETRACK
Work in Projects
Activists convince the Housing Authority to hire its residents-
but winning jobs is just half the battle. By Ron Feemster
Hired last summer and laid off months later, Kenneth Person now can count on steady
work as a painter in public housing.
CALL IT A TALE of two summers. A year ago,
Kenneth Person, a 26-year-old resident of the
James Weldon Johnson Houses in East
Harlem, worked nearly four months doing
demolition at New York City Housing Author-
ity (NYCHA) construction sites in Brooklyn
and the Bronx. When the weather grew cold,
he got laid off. The contractor that hired him,
4A Construction, told him to stay in touch. "I
got a lot of promises, " remembers Person, who
called 4A repeatedly looking for more work.
"But I never got hired again. "
After spending a winter scrounging for other
jobs, Person is back on a NYCHA construction
site, this time as a rookie painter for another
contractor, APS Painting. As a first-year appren-
tice in the painters union, he takes home less
pay than he did with 4A, forks over part of his
wages as union dues, and is obligated to attend
classes at a District Council 9 training center on
10
his own time. But Person still believes he is bet-
ter off. "I think this will have more stability,"
Person says. "If you get laid off, you have some-
body fighting for you."
Person is one of more than a dozen new
painters apprentices who probably owe their
jobs to a two-year battle by TRADES, a coali-
tion of unions, public housing residents and
community groups that has pushed the New
York City Housing Authority to enforce feder-
al and local regulations requiring its contractors
to hire public housing residents. In early May,
the Housing Authority informed APS Painting
that it would lose 15 NYCHA contracts worth
$8 million unless it met its obligation to spend
15 percent of its labor dollars to hire workers
who live in the Housing Authority projects.
"NYCHA told me I am not compliant," says
Igor Shikhris, the president of APS Painting. "No
compliance, no contracts." Shikhris says hiring
practices at APS, a firm that has repainted public
housing apartments as a nonunion contractor for
15 years, never faced close scrutiny until this spring.
Once Shikhris realized that hiring workers
who lived in the projects was the only way to save
his business, he discovered that it paid to go
union. Under federal law, all public housing
work is supposed to be paid the "prevailing wage"
for an area-and in New York City, the prevail-
ing wage is the union wage. Had it remained a
nonunion contractor, APS would have been
required to pay union scale to every worker, no
matter how inexperienced. But in the painters
union, like other trade unions, apprentices are
paid wages that are much lower than scale. That
makes it profitable for a contractor to take on less
experienced workers as part of its crews.
"I can't hire new people for $45 [an hour],"
Shikhris says, referring to the approximate cost
of the union wage and benefits package. "It's
too expensive. If I hire apprentices, I pay $17
an hour the first year. So I went union. "
This is precisely the reaction the TRADES
campaign is counting on. The coalition, whose
full name is Trade Unions and Residents for
Apprenticeship Development and Economic
Success, argues that if NYCHA enforces the
rules on resident hiring, contractors will have
an economic incentive to hire public housing
residents as apprentices.
In a September proposal to NYCHA,
TRADES promised that its four participating
unions-the painters, plumbers, carpenters
and laborers-would reserve apprenticeship
slots for public housing residents. TRADES
also pledged to develop and monitor a pre-
apprenticeship program to help public housing
residents attain the qualifications for such jobs,
including a GED degree. In exchange, the
group is asking the Housing Authority to
enforce regulations that require bidders and
their subcontractors to pay prevailing wages
and provide access to state-certified apprentice-
ships for employees.
One of the barriers to increasing resident
hiring has always been the vagueness of the fed-
eral legislation mandating it. Section 3 of the
Housing and Community Development Act of
CITY LIMITS
1968 requires housing authority contractors to
hire residents "to the greatest extent feasible."
This has proved to be a fuzzy and largely unen-
forceable statute, not just in New York but across
the country. Small programs administered by
nonprofits have enjoyed limited success in Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Newark and Philadel-
phia, according to Kate Rubin, a researcher at
New York University's Brennan Center. But when
outside funds for training and monitoring disap-
pear, the Section 3 jobs evaporate as well.
Since March 2001, NYCHA has also run an
in-house jobs initiative known as the Resident
Employment Program, which requires that 15
percent of the labor costs for every construction
comract greater than $500,000 be paid to resi-
dent employees.
"Previously, the way Section 3 worked was
that contractors would come to a development
and hire a local person for the duration of the
job," explains Ethel Velez, president of the ten-
ants association at the Johnson Houses. "But
when the job was over, they would lay that per-
son off, move on to the next development, and
hire someone else there. The reason I'm on board
with TRADES is to give residents the chance to
keep a job that pays a living wage."
As director of the New York City Public
Housing Resident Alliance, Velez is a member of
the TRADES negotiating comminee. Within
hours of learning that APS might sign with the
painters union, she and resident leaders around
the city responded to the union's call for new
workers. Velez encouraged Adam Mitchell, 23, to
apply for one of the new jobs. He had worked
nine months as a $28-per-hour Section 3
employee at Johnson Houses last year before get-
ting laid off. Another man from the Johnson
Houses, Javon Alexander, 26, made a more
abrupt career change. "I used to sell drugs," he
says. "But when 1 looked at my future, 1 knew 1
would end up in jailor getting shot."
UNIONS AND RESIDENTS hope to sell the TRADES
agenda as a win-win proposition for workers,
communities, contractors and the housing
authority. But at NYCHA, things continue to
move slowly. Last September, TRADES submit-
ted its proposal in the form of a memorandum of
understanding to be signed by all parties. But
even as it presses contractors like Shikhris to hire
residents, NYCHA has usually failed to acknowl-
edge TRADES, at least by name, in its public
statements about resident hiring.
NYCHA spokeswoman Sheila Greene credits
Housing Authority chair Tino Hernandez, who
arrived at the agency in 2001 , for making
progress possible. "When the current chairman
JULY / AUGUST 2003
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arrived, the agency was facing criticisms regard-
ing resident hiring, prevailing wage and procure-
ment practices," admits Greene. "For the past
year, we have been in negotiations with unions,
residents and activists. Once we reach an agree-
ment with the unions, we will determine with the
unions how to formalize it."
TRADES worries that the Housing Authority's
desire to "reach an agreement with the unions" veils
. a willingness to cut a deal that leaves residents and
community-based organizations out in the cold. In
May, as negotiations approached what might be the
final stages, NYCHA invited representatives of the
carpenters union to hear an offer that would union-
ize more jobs but exclude nonunion members of
TRADES. "To their credit, the carpenters brought
the offer back to TRADES the same day," says
Nicole Branca, coordinator of the coalition. "They
didn't try to cut a deal on the spot."
It is not obvious what advantages NYCHA
sees in dealing with unions and excluding other
parties. "I don't see why they don't just settle with
us," says Judith Goldiner, a Legal Aid attorney
who has advised TRADES from early on. "They
know we have been doing this a long time and we
are not going anywhere." In a May 20 meeting to
decide on future negotiating strategies, TRADES
members vowed that representatives from
unions, community groups and resident organi-
zations would attend every meeting with
NYCHA. "We are going to decide who they talk
to, " said Lavon Chambers, an organizer and
investigator with the Laborers-Employers Coop-
eration and Education Trust. "NYCHA isn't
going to decide who they negotiate with."
If TRADES succeeds in reaching an agree-
ment with NYCHA, it will be a historic step in
cooperative action by unions, residents and com-
munity organizations. "APS Painting was a victo-
ry for us," says Branca. "We may be on the brink
of an agreement. NYCHA has tried to divide the
unions, residents and community groups. But
[agency officials) are moving." Branca says strong
activism helped push recent progress, but she also
gives the current NYCHA leadership credit for
listening. "Hernandez has been the most accessi-
ble chair in recent history," she says. "NYCHA
wouldn't meet with us at all until 2002."
In oral presentations at meetings, if not yet on
paper, NYCHA has offered a counter-proposal
that, in some details, draws from the memoran-
dum of understanding submirred by TRADES in
the fall. The Construction Manager/Build pro-
gram, known as CM/Build, would allow NYCHA
to outsource $600 million in construction con-
tracts over three years to outside managers empow-
ered to accept bids from qualified contractors. By
some estimates, that amounts to between one-
third and one-half of the total projected volume of
construction con tracts to be let by the authority.
CITY LIMITS
..
The qualification requirements for contractors
who wish to bid resemble those that TRADES
proposed in the memorandum of understanding.
Contractors would be required to offer access to
state-certified apprenticeship programs, and to
offer pre-apprenticeship programs to help work-
ers earn GED degrees and acquire the life skills
necessary to complete a training program.
Assuming an annual contract volume of $200
million, the unions would offer 250 resident jobs
each year-including apprentice and journey-
man positions-if all the contracts went union,
or 1.25 jobs per $1 million in contracts for all
work that went to union contractors.
The main difference: NYCHA has not yet
offered a role for resident and community leaders.
"We especially want an advisory role in the pre-
apprenticeship training," Branca says. "Most pre-
apprenticeship programs tend to fail because too
many people drop out." TRADES demands that
whatever CM/Build agreement is reached,
NYCHA must also honor the current Resident
Employment Program rules that cover contracts
in excess of $500,000. In addition, TRADES
insists that contractors applying to bid on the
CM/Build contracts demonstrate a track record of
providing full benefits and worker's comp for the
past three years. "We are worried about contrac-
tors who sign up for health care and workman's
comp just so they can bid," Branca says. "When
they get the contract they cancel everything."
NYCHA spokeswoman Sheila Greene refuses
to speak about the Housing Authority's negotia-
tions with TRADES, acknowledging only that
there are "common goals" between the coalition's
proposed memorandum of understanding and
CM/Build. "At this point we are concerned about
substance and content," she says. At the same
time, she points out that NYCHA is increasing its
enforcement of prevailing-wage laws. As of mid-
May, Greene says, NYCHA was withholding $1.6
billion in contract payments pending the out-
come of ongoing prevailing-wage investigations.
Such enforcement is vital for the success of the
TRADES program. Unless contractors and sub-
contractors are compelled to pay prevailing
wages, they have no incentive to enter contracts
that require apprenticeships. "We're unskilled
workers looking for a job," says Person, the new
painters apprentice at APS. "It isn't easy to get a
job if no one is going to train you."
TRADES sees the emergence of union jobs, or
at least more permanent jobs for NYCHA resi-
dents, as a historic beginning. "This is a starting
point," says Branca. "TRADES is about system-
atically changing the resident hiring and procure-
ment processes ofNYCHA."
Ron Feemster is a freelance writer who lives in
Harlem. Additional reporting by Annia Ciezadlo.
JULY/AUGUST 2003
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AFTER NEARLY 15 YEARS of working to get New Yorkers into the recycling habit-
introducing composting, leaf collection, recycling centers and finally, in 1999, week-
ly pickups-the ciry's Department of Sanitation (DOS) announced last year that the
program was too expensive and needed to be dumped. Fighting back, the Ciry Coun-
cil struck a compromise with the mayor: Glass recycling would be suspended for two
years, plastic for one year, and metal and paper pickups would continue.
Under the council mandate, the Department of Sanitation must resume plastic
recycling this July. After much foot-dragging and various vague public statements,
Sanitation announced in May that it had signed a metal and plastic recycling contract
with a New Jersey scrap metal company, Hugo Neu. The company, which handled the
metal from the World Trade Center site, will pay the ciry $5.10 for each ton of metal
and plastic it picks up for the next five years.
The Hugo Neu deal, it now appears, comes not a moment too soon. The ciry
doesn't just issue contracts for recycling; it also pays private companies to haul garbage
to out-of-town landfills. And those contracts, City Limits has learned, are going to get
more expensive very soon. DOS is now receiving bids from companies interested in
exporting Brooklyn's trash, starting in September. They are showing a jump in the cost
of disposal: from $67 a ton currently to an average of $78 a ton for the next five years.
At the current volume of 3,745 tons a day of household trash, the bill would come to
$107 million a year for that borough alone.
In November, DOS will be soliciting bids for Manhattan's and Staten Island's trash,
and industry analysts say that the costs are likely to rise again. Looking at the Brooklyn bids
and at trends in the waste hauling business, they say the costs for that next round of bids
are likely to hit $81 a ton and higher. Garbage export contracts, which started after the
Giuliani administration began planning to close the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island in
1998, already cost the ciry more than $350 million a year in immediate costs.
The fee hikes alone are bad news for a ciry in budget crisis. But with recycling of
metal and plastic yet to resume, the situation is even more troubling: Thousands of
tons of waste that could have been recycled are ending up as very expensive trash
instead. Budget analysts have now joined environmentalists in concluding that Doher-
ry and the Bloomberg administration made a disastrous miscalculation when they sus-
pended recycling--one that the ciry will now literally be paying for, one ton at a time.
In February, Ciry Comptroller Bill Thompson laid out the losses in stark terms.
According to the comptroller's findings, not only have the savings from curting recy-
cling not materialized, but the ciry has dramatically increased the amount of waste that
has to be disposed of. "It is now abundantly clear that merely recycling metal and
exporting glass and plastic as waste is more expensive than recycling all these materials,"
declared Thompson in a sharply worded letter to Commissioner Doherry. The comp-
troller concluded that full-scale recycling would save the ciry $16.7 million a year.
For years, Doherry's agency has been insisting that recycling is far more expensive
than disposing garbage. And looked at one ton at a time, that has been true: The cur-
rent cost of collecting garbage is $66 per ton, disposing of it an average of $75 a ton.
Compare that, says Sanitation, with the cost of recycling: $120 a ton to collect, and
at least $70 to dispose.
Last spring, Doherty told Mayor Michael Bloomberg that Sanitation would save $40
million out of its $1 billion budget by suspending full recycling. The commissioner said
the savings would come from processing glass and plastic under waste export contracts
rather than recycling contracts, and he projected significant declines in the total number
of truck shifrs required to manage the city's waste stream.
But far from removing hundreds of truck shifrs, the Department of Sanitation has sus-
pended only 87 out of7,000 weekly trash and recycling pickups. Cuts in personnel have
been offiet by an increase in budgeted overtime payments, to make up for the reduction
in manpower. Most damaging, says the comptroller, the confusion surrounding what can
and can't be recycled has led to a lower "diversion rate" -the proportion of trash that gets
recycled. It has also shrunk the amount of money that the ciry makes from selling its metal
and paper recyclables, and increased the amount of trash in the ciry's garbage stream.
Far from saving $40 million, Sanitation has, at best, saved $11 million by sus-
pending full recycling, asserts the comptroller's office. "It appears that DOS overstat-
ed the savings the ciry would achieve due to processing glass and plastic under waste
export contracts rather than recycling contracts," Depury Comptroller Greg Brooks
told the Ciry Council at an April hearing.
"There is not a single thing the ciry did to try and turn this program around," main-
tains Mark !zeman, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council who has
closely followed the cuts in the city's recycling program. "Every day, government agencies
14 CITY LIMITS
JULY/AUGUST 2003
15
and private companies initiate reforms without completely shutting down
their operations. And there is no reason why the city couldn't have initiated
some cost-effective reforms while continuing a program that it had spent
tens of millions of dollars building up and educating the public about."
But aren't some savings still better than none? Not according to envi-
ronmental advocates, who maintain that the $11 million figure is still a
red herring: Recycling diversion rates, which hit a high after a 10-year
campaign by DOS to get the city to recycle-up to 21 percent a year
ago-have dropped today to 12.7 percent. Meanwhile, even as the city
faces a $3.4 billion budget deficit, recycling trucks roam the city half full.
AND THEN THERE'S NEXT YEAR. That's when, under the City
Council's law, the city must reinstate full recycling: glass, in addition to
metal, plastic and paper. Adding glass to the mix makes the job much
more expensive. Among other challenges, glass fetches very little money
in the recycling market, it weighs a lot, and it has a tendency to break
into pieces and contaminate the other recyclables picked up by the same
truck. In March, a joint mayoral-City Council task force on recycling
anticipated that glass posed the most serious obstacle to the city rein-
stating full recycling by July 2004, the date the Council targeted.
Once again, Hugo Neu has come to the forefront. Initially, the com-
pany submitted a bid for $70 per ton for disposal of recyclables. In May,
it reduced its bid again, to $51 per ton, making it on par with the cost
to the city for its trash disposal once the higher cost of collecting recy-
cling at the curb is factored in. Explaining the company's decision to cut
its bid to make it more competitive, Robert Kelman, the general man-
16
ager of Hugo Neu, says his company went back to the table, researched
aftermarkets for recycled glass, and decided it could reduce the bid and
still see a profit. "We recalculated our numbers and we found some mar-
ket development that could further develop [profits] on the glass side
and still amortize our investment over five years." So the decision came
down, says Kelman, to "push it," and the bid was lowered by $19.
If the city awards the full recycling bid this summer, Kelman estimates
that his company canhave a 90,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art separat-
ing system built in Hunts Point in the Bronx within 14 months. A recy-
cling center, Kelman is convinced, could spark an industrial rebirth in the
Bronx, drawing manufacturing companies to purchase and build with the
aftermarket materials produced by Hugo Neu's recycling facility.
But while cost is no longer an obstacle, Sanitation has not moved for-
ward to issue the contract for metal, glass and plastic. The metal-and-plas-
tic contract with Hugo Neu has also been delayed, at least temporarily. At
a City Council hearing in May, Sanitation Commissioner Doheny assett-
ed that funding for the contract was tied up in the state budget morass.
More precisely, says Councilmember David Yassky, co-chair of the coun-
cil's Sanitation and Solid Waste Management Committee, Sanitation is
waiting to see whether or not the legislature prevails in winning tax hikes
and other measures to bring in more revenue for New York City. If not,
DOS will probably look to cut recycling further.
FEW OBSERVERS WANT TO SAY IT OUT LOUD, but the 800-
pound gorilla in the room is Waste Management Inc. According to figures
continued on page 40
HOT TRASH
'Waste-to-energy' companies try to sell
New York on garbage-zapping technology.
BY LARRY GREENEMEIER
AS NEW YORK CITY CONTINUES to stagger under the burden of
exporting 13,000 tons of household trash a day, the City Council Sani-
tation and Solid Waste Committee is prodding the Department of San-
itation to look to state-of-the-art technology for solutions.
But don't call it incineration.
This summer, the Council plans to invite four "waste to energy" com-
panies to a hearing, where they'll showcase technologies that they want
to put into operation in New York City.
"The new technology is a realistic option if the city wants it," says
Carmen Cognetta, legal counsel for the Sanitation and Solid Waste
Committee. "But it'll take some movement on the part of the mayor and
the Sanitation Department to think beyond more than the next couple
of years. It'll be too late when the landfIlls are all full, and there's no place
to put the trash."
The hottest proposals, literally, come from companies marketing
super-heated zapping of trash. Unlike incinerators, which use comb us-
CITY LIMITS
tion to break waste down into carbon dioxide and other gases, these
waste-to-energy technologies attack trash at the molecular level, in an
oxygen-starved environment. This breakdown, the companies claim,
creates gas without the smoke, greenhouse gases and dioxins and other
toxins that accompany combustion. As an additional benefit, the process
produces energy--one company claims that it can turn 20 tons of trash
per hour into 50 megawatts of power.
Startech Environmental Corp., one of the companies slated to testi-
fy, makes a machine that uses ion-charged plasma torches to zap trash
with temperatures as high as 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit-three times
hotter than the sun's surface, and hot enough to break down the bonds
between molecules. (When the plasma torch is lowered into the plasma
converter chamber, it looks like a rocket ship coming in for a landing.)
The gas from this process is then cleaned of metals, compressed and sent
to a turbine where it can generate energy.
The company is handicapped by several factors, though, not least of
which is its lack of a track record in the United States. The company's
biggest project in operation is a $2.4
place to handle waste, but you ultimately would be turning the trash into
energy rather than burying it," says Charles, a manager in the city's
Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
Adeline Michaels, president of Concerned Citizens of Bensonhurst
and a member of Brooklyn's Solid Waste Advisory Board, has been fol-
lowing the development of Solen a's technology since the mid-1990s,
when the city, its solid waste advisory boards and the Environmental
Protection Agency were investigating new ways of treating dredged
material from New York Harbor. A staunch opponent of incineration-
she fought to make sure the nearby Southwest Brooklyn Incinerator
remained dormant-Michaels says it's most important to understand
that Solena's conversion process doesn't use oxygen. "People don't under-
stand how it works," says Michaels. "They hear extreme heat, and they
think fire."
Truck traffic and pollution are other scourges some residents are hop-
ing waste-to-energy could mitigate. "If the new technologies keep the
trucks off residential roads, it's good," says retired sanitation worker Sal
Cantelmi. "Using gas from the trash for
million, five-ton-per-day plasma con-
verter installed last November in Fukuo-
ka, Japan. A second drawback is that its
technologies work on a small scale: Its
largest model can handle only 100 tons
of trash per day.
ION-CHARGED PLASMA
energy is a step in the right direction."
Still, Cantelmi says he would want the
city to discuss any decisions regarding
new waste-to-energy technology before
they installed a plant in his Greenpoint,
Brooklyn, neighborhood. "The city
would have to be prepared with safety
reports or some other proof that the new
technology isn't going to create addition-
al pollution," he says.
TORCHES ZAP TRASH WITH
Another company looking to do busi-
ness with the city, D.C.-based Solena
Group Inc., has likewise sold its technol-
ogy in Europe and Asia, but never the
United States. Like Startech, Solena uses
plasma torches to break garbage down at
the molecular level, a process the compa-
ny says was developed by NASA scien-
tists studying how spacecraft would react
to extreme heat during reentry into the
TEMPERATURES AS HIGH
AS 30,000 DEGREES-THREE
TIMES HOTTER THAN THE
Indeed, environmental groups cau-
tion against a rush to embrace waste-to-
energy, especially since recycling and
waste reduction have not fully been put
in place as an alternative. "These tech-
SUN'S SURFACE.
earth's atmosphere. U.S. customers, whether municipalities or corpora-
tions, haven't been forced to find alternatives to landfills, says Solena chief
scientist Dennis Miller. "We're selling plants faster than we can build them
in Europe and Asia," he says. "But in the U.S., we can't compete with a
hole in the ground."
Solena and Startech claim that their plasma conversion processes are
much cleaner than incineration, producing no ash and negligible
amounts of nitrogen oxides and other harmful gases. The gases produced
by the ptocess are cooled, filtered and sent to an attached turbine to cre-
ate energy. There's no smoke stack. Particles not completely gasified by
the process collect at the bottom of the plasma converter and are com-
pressed as glassy black slag that can be cut into blocks and sold as build-
ing materials.
But because plasma conversion has never been put to the test in the
U.S., environmental and community advocates in the city are deeply
split on the technology, which Solena presented at a City Council hear-
ing last June. Some community activists who opposed incineration wel-
come waste-to-energy as a benevolent alternative. Environmental groups
say the proposed plants demand far greater scrutiny and are no substi-
tute for policies promoting waste reduction and recycling.
Long opposed to incineration because of its smell and health hazards,
Brooklyn residents Charles and Adeline Michaels are vocal supporters of
waste-to-energy. "You could use the same infrastructure that's already in
JULY I AUGUST 2003
nologies are unproven," says Mark lze-
man, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Right
now New York City has to find ways to deal with its garbage in a cost-
effective and environmentally sound manner. These proposals don't sat-
isfy either."
The city's Department of Sanitation says it is open to the new tech-
nologies. The department has concerns, however, about any unproven
system's ability to handle trash on the scale of New York City's. "Con-
sidering the enormity of the city's waste production," says John Pam-
palone, a Sanitation Department spokesman, "we don't know of any
plant in operation that can handle this efficiently."
Solena's Miller proposes that it's just a matter of building enough facil-
ities and placing them at existing waste transfer stations around the city.
While acknowledging that investing in plant construction would be an
expensive proposition for the city, waste-to-energy proponent Steven
Cohen, who directs Columbia University's graduate program in earth sys-
tems, science policy and management, says that the more formidable
obstacle is a political one. "The companies can't understand why New York
wouldn't buy their technology," says Cohen. "They don't understand the
political barriers. People have a not-in-my-backyard syndrome. I know
from our research that this is a proven technology all over the world."
Larry Greenemeier is a Brooklyn-based journalist covering business and
technology.
17
ose
The firm that collects when
landlords don't pay taxes
offered waterfront real estate
to a favored buyer-not the
highest bidder. A Bronx
community group learns
the hard way how New York
is selling off its future.
By Matt Pacenza
1391-99 LAFAYETIE AVENUE
is located along a rumbling industrial strip of
Hunts Point in the Bronx. Trains and trucks
thunder by, making deliveries to the fish and
meat markets right next door. From the road,
you can only see the battered fence of what,
from the 1950s until recently, was the Bronx
Fur Dressing Company. Trains brought car-
casses here, workers scraped flesh off the pelts,
and the hides were cleaned and processed.
Today, the property isn't much to look at-
except for its view of the Bronx River. There,
with the water quietly lapping against the
land's edge, you can forget for a moment that
you're in a crumbling industrial zone.
That's just what Paul Lipson, executive direc-
tor of the community development group The
Point, dreams of-a place where Hunts Point's
young people can escape and embrace this lime
18
slice of the natural environment.
The Point's dreams for 1391-99 Lafayette
are expansive. Where carcasses once hung, Lip-
son hopes to build a boathouse, so young peo-
ple can learn to row, and gain an appreciation
of river ecology. Or even learn to build boats by
hand. The organization wants to make space
for local businesses, like a soul-food catering
company. And room for arts classes-and stu-
dios for budding artists. On the 25,000-square
foot lot, there's room for all of it, with plenty of
space left over--open space, a precious rarity in
the largely redeveloped South Bronx.
The location couldn't be more ideal for The
Point-it's just four blocks from the organiza-
tion's new headquarters, where about 100 young
people already come every day for arts and other
activities. Immediately to the east of 1391-99
Lafayette is a slice of vacant land that extends all
the way to the water's edge, which the city Parks
Department is currently turning into a small
park. Together, The Point's leaders realized sever-
al years ago, these two pieces ofland could be the
natural anchor of a new Hunts Point.
There was just one problem: The Point
didn't own 1391-99 Lafayette. In 1998, Lipson
first approached the property's longtime own-
ers, Namran Realty, asking to buy the old fur
factory. Namran named $900,000, more than
the Point could pay. So they negotiated on and
off for several years, until late 2001, when Lip-
son and his attorneys found out that the prop-
erty was about to be seized.
It turned out that Namran hadn't been pay-
ing its tax bills, nor filles for various violations.
In 1996, New York City had sold Namran's
$541,372 in back debt on the property--called
a tax lien-to a private crust that immediately
CITY LIMITS
pays the city and then collects the debt. Under a
city program that handles roughly 4,000 similar
transactions each year, the trust, in turn, hires a
Connecticut-based company that specializes in
tax liens, called JER Revenue Services, to do the
work of actually collecting the debt.
Bur, like the city, JER was unable to collect
the back debt from Narnran Realty. So in
December 2001, JER offered the old factoty at
a tax foreclosure auction. No one bid enough to
cover the total debt-which by then had
reached more than $1 million-so JER bought
the property itself, on behalf of the trust.
At first, the Point wasn't unhappy with this
turn of events, since it could now negotiate with
a company that was eager to sell, plus they now
had a commitment from Congressman Jose Ser-
rano for funds to help buy it. Lipson and his col-
leagues assumed, remembers Gail Suchman, an
JULY I AUGUST 2003
environmental attorney at New York Lawyers
for the Public Interest who does pro bono work
for the Point, "that [tax lien sales 1 foreclosure
was a program that operated in the public inter-
est." Looking back today, Suchman shakes her
head. "Having been a lawyer for 33 years, it's
somewhat embarrassing to sound so naive."
Afrer buying the property, JER moved to sell
it privately. Bronx real estate investor and land-
lord Jacob Selechnik won JER's February 2002
sealed bid auction by offering $775,000. The
Point was disappointed-it had bid $625,000-
but the group quickly moved to contact Selech-
nik, to see if he would sell the lot privately.
He would-for $885,000. Although the
price was much higher than it had hoped to
pay, the Point reluctantly agreed.
However, Lipson and his colleagues soon
discovered that their waterfront dream would
be deferred-and maybe dashed. JER told The
Point that Selechnik hadn't actually paid for the
property, even though a few months had passed
since JER accepted his bid. (Selechnik now says
that he did try to make good on his initial bid,
but that JER "returned my check.") Selechnik
was actually looking to sell his winning bid to
The Point-and clear $110,000.
The Point immediately backed out of its ten-
tative agreement with Selechnik. In the mean-
time, 1391-99 Lafayette sat empty for months.
And then, on June 19, a fire broke out in the fac-
tory. It was a big fire--three different Fire
Department companies responded, the build-
ing's roof was completely destroyed and five fire-
fighters suffered minor injuries battling the blaze.
The Fire Department later determined that the
fire had been intentionally set, but it closed its
investigation without naming any suspects.
19
Late last June, JER informed the Point that
it was reopening bidding for 1391-99 Lafayerre.
Because the fire had damaged the building-
and also brought to light that hazardous waste
remained at the former factory, which would
cost its new owner tens of thousands to c1ean-
The Point decided to lower its bid to $525,000.
On Friday, June 28, The Point faxed and
emailed its bid to JER property manager
Michelle Lynch, who was handling the auction.
They were confident they would win, since the
Point's January offer had been second only to
Selechnik's. Then, that following Monday, Lynch
responded by email, asking if The Point was
aware of the "fire at the property and . .. a spill of
toxic substances? Are you sure you want to bid
$525,000 under the circumstances?"
The Point reconsidered. Several hours later,
via email, it changed its bid-to $200,000.
Lynch immediately replied-"Thank you!"
Two days later, the Point found out who
won the bid-Jacob Selechnik, who had
offered $499,900. To Suchman, what hap-
pened was clear: "She induced us to lower our
bid-so she could sell it to Selechnik."
JER disputes this interpretation, saying that
Lynch questioned the $525,000 bid because
she believed that it had originated not from
The Point, but "from a new bidder," whom
Lynch wanted to ensure knew about the fire
and environmental issues.
However, copies of emails obtained by City
20
Limits directly contradict JER's claim. The
original email that Lynch had replied to, which
carne from Suchman, explicitly states that the
attorney was bidding "on behalf of The Point."
For its part, The Point was furious. They
couldn't fathom JER's blatant favoritism
towards Selechnik. Why did JER wait nearly
five months, after Selechnik made no payment
on his initial $775,000 bid-which he was sup-
posed to do within two days-before trying to
sell the property again? Why did Michelle
Lynch urge the Point to lower its June 28 bid?
Why would JER then accept Selechnik's second
bid, after he hadn't made good on his first one?
They didn't know the answers to these ques-
tions-but they certainly had suspicions. "I
really believe they have a special relationship
with Selechnik," says Lipson, still angry
months after the event. "JER created every
opportunity for him to buy the property to the
exclusion of others."
From his office on the Grand Concourse in
the Bronx, Selechnik disputes the Point's
account of what went down with 1391-99
Lafayerre last spring. "At no point did I ever
renege on this deal," he says. Rather, Selechink
says that JER wouldn't allow him to close it.
Lipson and the Point's attorneys would have
probably been even angrier with JER if they
knew more about Jacob Selechnik-a Bronx
real estate investor and landlord with a long his-
tory of mismanaging residential properties, bat-
t1ing tenants and alienating community groups.
Selechnik's neglect of the buildings he owns
has also caused the city of New York to sue
him-not once, but twice. Most recently, the
city department of Housing Preservation and
Development fued suit last year against Selech-
nik and his daughter Ellen for more than a thou-
sand outstanding housing code violations in 14
properties that the family owns in the Bronx.
None of this seems to have inhibited JER
Revenue Services-if the company even knew
about it. In its role collecting millions of dollars
of debt owed to New York City, and selling off
more than a thousand properties, JER has
tremendous power-and operates with almost
zero public scrutiny. The company is responsible
for managing a program that is collecting nearly
$1.4 billion in back taxes and unpaid fines on
more than 42,000 properties in New York City.
JACOB SELECHNIK'S LONG
history of antagonism with Bronx tenants can be
best characterized by a flyer from an undeter-
mined date buried in the archives of the North-
west Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a
community development and advocacy organi-
zation. "BEWARE!" the poster reads in huge let-
ters, "Selechnik Is Coming!!" The flyer accuses
Selechnik of making "life miserable for thou-
sands of tenants in Morris Heights, South Ford-
ham and Kingsbridge Heights. "
The 1970s and 1980s were a tumultuous
time in the Bronx. Hundreds of thousands of
Jewish and Irish families were fleeing as minor-
ity families moved in. Abandonment and arson
were common. Tensions between landlords and
tenants were explosively high. Jacob Selechnik
was one property owner in the midst of this
chaos, accused of buying buildings cheap from
their previous owners, squeezing every penny
possible from the low-income tenants who
lived there, and then either flipping the prop-
erties for more money to a new owner or walk-
ing away from the building.
Such actions were common enough that
Northwest Bronx, then a nascent group with a
skeleton staff, created a Selechnik Committee in
the late 1970s to try and keep the landlord from
buying more buildings. "We were vety aggressive
with any of his buildings," says the group's cur-
rent executive director, Mary Dailey. "We would
try to do anything to stop the sale."
It wasn't just community groups challenging
Selechnik. In 1985, the city Department of
Housing Preservation and Development sued
him after he failed to provide tenants with heat
and hot water, and the agency had to buy heat-
CITY LIMITS
r
ing oil for about 40 of Selechnick's buildings.
The suit was settled for an undisclosed amount.
Selechnik returned to the public eye in the
early 1990s, when he and a partner began buy-
ing Bronx apartment buildings from Freddie
Mac, the national mortgage reseller, which had
a stock of about 150 properties it had seized for
mortgage default.
Northwest Bronx, which itself wanted to buy
some of the properties, found out that Freddie
Mac had sold several to Selechnik. Led by Dailey,
the coalition immediately began a public rela-
tions campaign to stop the sale of buildings to a
landlord with a reputation of treating tenants
badly. They succeeded: Freddie Mac "declined to
do business with" Selechnik, according to a 1993
New York Times story. (In response to questions
from City Limits about why it decided to not
work with Selechnik, Freddie Mac said it would
not discuss events from 10 years ago.)
Today, Jacob Selechnik remains an active
landlord and real estate investor, almost exclu-
sively in the Bronx. A review of public records
shows that Selechnik and members of his family,
primarily his daughter Ellen, have had ownership
interests in roughly 11 0 apartment buildings in
the ci ty over the past decade.
The records suggest that Selechnik's prima-
ry tactic is to buy an interest in properties with
big financial problems-whether Freddie Mac
buildings that are foreclosed, or properties
where the owner has difficulty paying the
mortgage-then move in as the owner, run the
property for a few years and finally turn around
and sell it for a tidy profit.
Buying buildings and reselling them for
much higher prices has worked well for Selech-
nik. For example, at 65 Jessup Place in Mount
Eden, Selechnik bought a 38-unit apartment
building in 1994 for $235,000-and sold it in
1995 for $560,000.
At least one Bronx housing activist says
Selechnik can be a decent landlord. Scott
Auwarter of the Citizens Advice Bureau, a non-
profit that assists youth, seniors and others from
its office right next to Bronx housing court, says
that his housing staff has found Selechnik and
his staff fairly receptive when it comes to getting
repairs done or preventing evictions. ''As Bronx
landlords go," says Auwarter, the group's direc-
tor of eviction prevention, "our staff doesn't
think this is a bad guy."
However, the city housing agency, fed up
with thousands of outstanding housing code
violations, is suing Selechnik for mismanaging
his buildings. "We've initiated comprehensive
litigation against Selechnik in 14 buildings," an
JULY/AUGUST 2003
HPD spokesperson told City Limits. HPD is
suing both to collect fines and to force Selech-
nik to make repairs.
One property that needs repairs is 1881
Grand Concourse, a 20-apartment, six-story
building that HPD says has 72 code violations,
for everything from roofleaks to mold to a col-
lapsing ceiling. The building's owner, according
to HPD, is Ellen Selechnik, Jacob's daughter.
"Ever since they took over," says Minerva
Melendez, who with her son has lived at 1881
Grand Concourse for 12 years, "they're letting
this building get abandoned." She wearily
recites her building's problems: common spaces
are "filthy"; the buzzers and intercoms don't
work (which she blames for a recent robbery at
gunpoint in the building); ceiling plaster is col-
lapsing; the elevator rarely works.
Environmental attorney
Gail Suchman thought
tax lien sales "was a
program that operated
in the public interest."
Looking back today,
Suchman shakes her
head. "It's somewhat
embarrassing to sound
so naive."
Despite HPD's litigation, Selechnik denies
that his buildings are in bad shape. He says that
many of the outstanding violations are "old sru1f.
I try to do the right things," he insists. "But they
don't come around and reinspect."
To the Bronx watchers familiar with Selech-
nik, buying buildings from JER fits perfeccly
within his model of acquiring troubled build-
ings. "Ie just make sense that he's connected
with tax lien sales," says Dailey. "He's that kind
of operator-he finds a way to squeeze in some
place in properties with money problems."
IF EVALUATED BY DOLLARS
and cents alone, tax lien sales has been a success-
ful program for the city. Since 1996, the sales
have generated more than $1.4 billion in revenue
for New York-under the city's old tax collection
program, much of that revenue might have gone
uncollected, or at least taken longer to collect.
In addition, the specter of JER's higher inter-
est rates-the debts grow by 18 percent a year, as
compared to 9 percent before the lien is sold-
has led property owners to payoff their tax bills
more quickly. In 1995, 4.8 percent of property
owners didn't pay their initial tax bills. As of last
year, that number had dropped to 2.5 percent.
Under the tax lien sales program, afrer prop-
erty taxes go unpaid for two years (three years for
residential properties) the city packages the
unpaid debt and sells it to a trust created by the
Bank of New York, at a slight discount. The debt
is primarily made up of property taxes, but also
includes unpaid water and sewer charges, envi-
ronmental and health bills, and charges for emer-
gency housing repairs performed by the ciry. The
trust issues bonds to payoff the city, and then
hires JER Revenue Services to collect the debt.
As JER collects the debt, it pays off the bond-
holders-and collects fees for itseJ Since tax
lien sales have begun, JER has managed to col-
lect most of the debt without resorting to auc-
tions. Of the roughly 42,000 liens sold so far,
JER has only had to resort to auctions for 1,457
properties. It may not be the original property
owner who actually pays off the lien and avoids
foreclosures. Anecdotal evidence and samplings
of public records suggest that many owners sell
their property-and their debt-to new owners.
Auctions are JER's policy of last resort.
However, there will almost certainly be more in
coming years, because of the length of time the
legally complex foreclosure process takes. For
example, for 1391-99 Lafayette, it took more
than five years.
All of this earns JER, a division of Virginia-
based JE Robert Companies, a pretty penny. In
response to questions from City Limits, the
company says it has earned "less than 5 per-
cent" of the total amount it collects. So once
JER collects all of the $1.4 billion in liens, it
will have earned up to $70 million.
JER's success at collecting debt for New York
City is bringing the company a windfall of bus i-
ness elsewhere-most recencly in upstate New
York. Five different upstate cities and one coun-
ty-Syracuse, Buffalo, Schenectady, Bingham-
ton, Plattsburgh and Erie County-are joining
together to sell their unpaid tax debt to a state
agency, the Municipal Bond Bank Agency,
which will in turn hire JER to collect the debt.
The potential for JER's business to expand
continued on page 39
21
22
We send armies of investigators into homes
child abuse or neglect-and leave scared .
behind. New York is now exploring what
oun
CITY LIMITS
to probe reports of
and distrustful families
other states already
~ know: Helping families
can help protect
kids, too.
By Rachel Blustain
JULY I AUGUST 2003
L
eonie Fough seems like a mother who
should have nothing to fear. She lives
with her husband and two children in a
Harlem brownstone, with plants in their sun-
filled windows, encyclopedias in her children's
rooms and a drum set in the basement. When
her first child was born, Fough left her job as a
medical transcriber to be a full-time mother.
Now 9 and 11, her children go to swimming
and piano lessons, and Fough volunteers at
their schools.
But for several years, her 9-year-old son,
Lyvasco, was struggling. He had received a schol-
arship to attend the elite private school Dalton,
but Lyvasco fdt like an outsider, and sometimes
other children teased him. He was one of only
two black children in his grade. He is also a Jeho-
vah's Witness, which fUrther set him apart.
Exactly what happened one winter day two
years ago is unclear. Lyvasco told city child
protective workers that a playmate had a pen
in his pocket, and that when they were chasing
each other, the pen jammed into his hand. His
case report notes that Lyvasco had a small
hole, about two millimeters in size, in his right
palm. But school officials suspected that
Fough had inflicted the wound on her son and
called the Administration for Children's Ser-
vices (ACS). (Neither the city nor Dalton will
comment about the incident.)
That evening, a man and a woman rang the
Foughs' doorbell. They showed their badges,
and told Fough someone had alleged that she
had abused her son. They searched through her
pantry to see if she had food in the house. They
took the children into their bedrooms to ask
them privately about the allegation, and asked
them to remove their clothes, so they could
look for marks on their bodies. They woke up
Fough's husband, who worked nights for the
Transit Authority, to question him. They asked
Fough whether she had stabbed her son, how
she disciplined her children, and what she did
when she was stressed. They told Fough they
would be coming back.
After two months, the Child Protective Ser-
vices worker told Fough she believed the case
would be closed. But a few nights later, Fough
recalls, ACS called and said, "You need to be in
court Monday morning."
The case dragged on for seven more
months, despite letters of support from the
children's Legal Aid lawyer and other adults
who know the children well-all stating they
believed the case should be closed.
Fough spent much of her time in bed crying.
She would think of all the horror stories she'd
heard about children being abused in foster
care. She developed stomach pains.
Lyvasco began to have even more trouble in
school, and Fougns children became afraid to
sleep alone. With the expenses of the lawyer,
plus a family therapist, the Foughs found
themselves $30,000 in debt. The piano and
swimming lessons stopped. Fough also began
to limit what her children did for fear that they
would hurt themselves. "I used to take my kids
skating every week, but 1 thought, if anything
happens to them, ACS will blame me for it. I
would tell my kids, ' Don't run. Don't jump,'
because ACS is coming."
After nine months, the courts ruled in the
Foughs' favor, and ACS closed the case, but the
original finding that Fough inflicted the
wound in Lyvasco's hand still stands. Fough
says she constantly tells her son, "'It won't hap-
pen again. It was a mistake. It's not against
you.' But in his world he's seeing, 'All these
adults are against me.' 1 don't think they realize
what they do to people's lives. 1 really, really
don't think they realize."
I
n the case of the Foughs, child protective
services ran roughshod over a family. But
the investigation the Foughs endured was,
at its core, a standard procedure. Protective
workers routinely enter homes-55,925 times
last year in New York City-trying to judge
whether seemingly minor symptoms like a
wound from a pen are indications of more seri-
ous harm to children.
Many families that come to the attention of
Child Protective Services are not like the
Foughs-middle-class and well-adjusted. Most
often, caseworkers are dealing with families
who are really having a hard time. The child is
acting out or missing school. Or a former
boyfriend is harassing the mom; or a daughter
is running away and it's suspected she's being
sexually abused; or the mother is depressed and
stressed and has no help. She may be tuned out
to her children's needs because she's using drugs.
But only in about one out of seven cases is it
clear to child protective workers and their super-
visors that their most obvious power-removing
children and placing them in foster care-is the
right response to a situation in a home. "Typi-
cally, you don't come into a home and see a big
hand mark on a child's face, and a needle stick-
ing out of the mother's arm, and the mother say-
ing, 'If you think I'm going to stop using PCp,
you've got to be crazy,'" notes Margaret Young, a
New York City CPS worker from 1996 to 2002,
who now works as an intern in the Public Advo-
23
More than a dozen states have decided that
intervene in families' lives-more like social
cate's office. Much more onen, Young says, she
would investigate an allegation that a parent was
using drugs, but there would be no direct indi-
cation of drug use. There would be no sheets on
the bed, one child would have rotten teeth, and
all the children would be falling asleep in class.
"In those cases, you know something is wrong
because this is the third report already, but you
don't know what," Young recalls.
In the business of child protection, most cases
full in that gray area, yet investigators find that
the very nature of investigations onen makes it
harder to help these parents. Investigations can
be aggressive and punitive, and make parents and
children scared and angry. As a result, farnilies
hide their problems, even when they actually
need and want help. Investigators can mandate
preventive services, but the counselors who work
with farnilies say much of their energy goes sim-
ply into battling parents' distrust.
Bernice Guyton is a member of the Child
Welfare Organizing Project, a grassroots orga-
nization advocating to make the child welfare
system more responsive to parents. Guyton
used to be, in her own words, a recreational
drug user. About once a weekend, according to
Guyton, she would send her children, 16, 14
and 5, to spend the night at her mother's, and
she would get together with friends in the
neighborhood and get high on cocaine. She
says her children regularly attended school and
earned good grades, and she had a 9 to 5 job
24
making $18,000. Guyton believes her drug use
was not affecting her children. The child pro-
tective system believed it was.
At 11 one night while Guyton was taking a
shower, two CPS workers arrived at her apart-
ment to investigate. The next evening when she
returned nom work, her children were gone. "I
lost my mind. 1 called the police, I called the
school. I said, 'Where my kids at?' I was scream-
ing," she says. "The only person 1 didn't call was
the president, and he crossed my mind. " ACS
had taken her children to foster care. The
agency returned them just a month later.
Guyton says the experience made her kids
fearful, and len her with a fierce anger at child
protective services. "They totally violated my
rights as a parent, as a human being, " she said.
"They stripped my rights as a mother." (ACS
would not comment for this story.)
Her experience is not unusual. "The whole
event will be everlasting in my memory; because
how do you forget the day it seemed possible that
the city was about to remove your child from
you?" remembers Caroline Marrero of East New
York. Marrero had a relatively good encounter:
The child protective worker told her son, who
had run away after a family fight, that he should
be "proud to have a mother who loves him so
much." But Marrero recalls the fear most of all.
"The memories of it sci1l terrorize me, " she says.
A steadily growing number of practitioners,
researchers and advocates nationwide have been
questioning the current approach to child pro-
tection. How can child protection efforts
encourage more families to cooperate with a
social welfare system that can offer support and
resources over the long haul? Might a less intru-
sive child protective system--one that looked
more like social work and less like police work-
in fact leave children more, rather than less, safe?
Could more resources be better applied to sup-
port programs, and to those investigations that
truly do demand a high degree of intensity?
These questions are now the subject of intense
debate in the child-welfare world.
More than a dozen states have decided that it's
better to intervene in troubled farnilies' lives in a
more constructive way. Cases that are obviously
high risk-involving evidence of serious abuse,
or clear parental incompetence-would sci1l be
investigated as usual. But when there is reason to
believe a family would benefit from help, it
would instead receive an assessment and, if war-
ranted, a referral to social services, such as coun-
seling. That framework, known as "dual track"
child protection, is slated to be tested in Westch-
ester and in one community in the Bronx.
Not every child advocate supports dual
track. One concern is that states in budget cri-
sis will turn to it as a way to cut spending, giv-
ing nothing more than a telephone call and a
referral to families with serious problems. At
the same time, it's clear to virtually everyone
working in child welfare that something must
be done to make investigations something
other than a home invasion.
Child protection as it is practiced in most
states "does nothing to foster trust," says Susan
Notkin, director of the Center for Community
Partnerships in Child Welfare. "And too often,
it focuses on specific allegations without look-
ing at underlying needs and what caused prob-
lems in first place. "
Richard Gelles, a professor of social work at
the University of Pennsylvania who made his
name in child welfare as a safety hawk, is
among the critics who believe child protection
needs a careful overhaul. He has his own varia-
tion on the dual track idea: Following his credo
that "they could do as well by flipping a coin,"
Gelles wants to see an actuarial system that
would send out investigators only in cases that
involve multiple risk factors known to be asso-
ciated with abuse and neglect. Everyone else
would receive an offer of social services. Says
Gelles: "All those people subjected to intrusive
investigations, with the risk that their children
will be taken away, doesn't create a formula for
embracing the help that's offered. "
CITY LIMITS
there are more constructive ways to
work than police work.
"We're intruding in a police kind of way
into tens of thousands of homes a year," agrees
Jim Purcell, the executive director of the Coun-
cil of Child and Foster Caring Agencies, a trade
organization of New York private child welfare
agencies, including many that provide foster
care and preventive services under contract
with the city. "But in four out of five of those
cases, we're not doing anything to help."
they ask children to undress, to see if there are
bruises on their bodies.
Social workers are not only trying to make a
broad assessment of the children's safety-they
are legally ordered to decide whether a particu-
lar act of abuse or neglect has occurred. In two-
thirds of cases, CPS workers don't find enough
evidence to substantiate the allegation. One-
third of cases are marked "indicated, " meaning
there's evidence to suggest abuse or neglect
took place. When a case is indicated, it stays on
a parent's record for 10 years after the youngest
child in the home turns 18. It prohibits that
person from working in child care or becoming
a foster parent. It is also part of the public
record, and shows up on job- and security-
related background checks.
Having a case indicated does not, however,
mean that children are necessarily in so much
danger that they should be put in foster care. It
doesn't even obligate ACS to provide the family
with social services, like therapy, housekeeping
help or anger management classes. In fact, in 40
percent of cases where a report is indicated,
families receive no further support from ACS.
Yet evidence shows that all is not well with
many of the unilies whose cases are quickly
closed. One in four are reported again, and uni-
lies in which children die at the hands of their par-
ents often have had multiple investigations in the
past. For all the aggressive measures Child Protec-
tive Services takes to insulate children ftom harm,
and despite declines in recent years in fatalities
among children whose unilies have been investi-
F
amilies like the Foughs come to the
anention of Child Protective Services in
part because the number of abuse and
neglect reports has skyrocketed. In 1974, when
the federal government began requiring that
professionals like teachers and doctors report
signs of abuse and neglect, there were only
60,000 reports nationwide. By 1980, that
number hit 1.1 million. Then came the crack
and AIDS epidemics. By the early 1990s, there
were 3 million reports each year.
What Are Investigations For?
About 88,000 New York City children were
investigated by ACS between July 2001 and
June 2002. The number of reports is particu-
larly high in poor, minority neighborhoods.
Each year, parents or guardians of approxi-
mately one out of every 25 children in Harlem,
the South Bronx and parts of Brooklyn are
investigated for abuse or neglect. On any given
block and in most buildings in those neighbor-
hoods live children and parents who have gone
through a child protective investigation.
Without question, some of the cases inves-
tigated warrant a severe response. In 2001 in
New York City, for instance, there were 552
reports of parents choking, twisting or shaking
their children, 654 cases of parents fracturing
their children's bones and 218 cases of aban-
donment. There were 5,159 reports of sexual
abuse and l30 fatalities.
But there were also 16,946 reports of educa-
tional neglect that year, 25,717 reports of a par-
ent's alcohol or drug misuse and 15,470 reports
of inadequate food, clothing and shelter. Some
of those reports are signs of much worse prob-
lems. Others are simply what they appear to be.
All are investigated using an identical procedure.
About two in three reports phoned into the
State Central Registry get sent on to ACS for
mandatory investigation. State law requires the
city to interview children's teachers, doctors,
neighbors and anyone else who can provide
insight into their lives; visit a home within 48
hours; and interview each child in that home in
private, so that fear of a parent or sibling won't
keep them from talking. Investigators watch
how parents and children interact. Sometimes
JULY/AUGUST 2003
70,000
L ' - - - ~ -.....,
60,000
50,000
~
.... REPORTS
INVESTIGATED
.. CHILDREN
ADMITIED
/
--.
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
..
-.---
The number of families pulled into
the net of child protection has grown
dramatically since the late 1960s.
Then came the crack and AIDS epi-
demics, which caused the number of
child abuse and neglect cases to rise
astronomically. In New York City,
those numbers went from 41,454 in
1985 to 59,353 in 1989. After falling in
the mid 1990s, they shot back up dur-
ing the Giuliani years, and they remain
at near-peak levels, 55,925 in 2002.
But these investigations are taking
place in a very different city than that
of the 1980s and 1990s. Crack and
AIDS are no longer the epidemics they
once were. Hardline Giuliani-era poli-
~
----
cies that sent waves of kids to foster
care have given way to more careful
assessment of alternatives. The number
of children entering foster care has fall-
en sharply-from a high of 13,215 in
1997 to just over 8,100 in 2002.
How it all adds up: The gap between
the number of families investigated
and the number of kids being put in
foster care has been widening for sever-
al years, and reached a record high in
the last two years. "Dual track" and
other new models of child protection
seek to get help to those families
between the lines: who are in need but
aren't in foster care.
-RB
2S
Workers are trained to ask families, "How can we
The more in control a family feels, the more likely
gated by ACS, safety too often remains elusive.
"There's a fine line between a family that
needs help and a family where there's abuse and
neglect. That's why there are so many repeat
reports," says Judith Meltzer, deputy director
for the Center for the Study of Social Policy,
which seeks to improve ways that states and
localities work with disadvantaged communi-
ties and families. "The real goal is to have a sys-
tem that is perceived by the community and by
families as helpful, so we can get involved soon-
er and help families develop the skills they need
so that the next time there's a crisis, they'll have
links to supports and services to deal with it. It
may not be the first crisis but subsequent crises
that lead to abuse and neglect."
I
t's a rare day in politics when legislators of
any state agree that the law is too tough on
parents who may have abused or neglected
their children. Since 1993, however, more than
a dozen states as dissimilar as Missouri, Florida,
Minnesota, Texas and South Carolina have
decided they can keep more children safe if they
treat child abuse and neglect less like crimes and
more like a public health problem. They have
implemented a dual track (also known as "dif-
ferential response") child welfare system,
strengthening investigations that target the
highest-risk cases while instituting more collab-
orative, parent -friendly contact for the rest.
26
The model is based on the premise that not
all family problems are the same, and they
shouldn't be treated the same. In high-risk
cases, states have sought to expand the police-
like skills of CPS workers, and partnered more
closely with the police. Florida completely
transferred investigations for the most serious
cases to the police. But in cases judged lower
risk, which are about 40 to 60 percent of the
total, states have said families should be
"assessed for services" rather than investigated.
Assessment-track cases include those involv-
ing allegations like educational neglect; inade-
quate food, clothing, and shelter; and leaving
kids home alone. In Iowa, legislators decided
the state would neither investigate nor assess
cases of minor physical injury that were con-
sidered unlikely to recur. North Dakota made
the radical decision that all families who were
the subject of an abuse or neglect report would
be assessed rather than investigated.
Typically, for cases placed on the assessment
track, workers no longer judge whether or not a
parent is guilty of anything. There are no indi-
cated reports, and a fiunily's file, while open to
social service agencies, is otherwise sealed to the
public. Workers are trained to ask families, "How
can we help you?" rather than, "Have you done
something wrong?" Parents have the right to
accept or refuse any and all services. Workers also
ask fiunilies what resources they themselves
might turn to, like relatives, neighbors, or a com-
munity group. The thinking is that the more in
control a fiunily feels, the more likely it will be to
want to address its problems.
But the new regime is not entirely touchy
feely. Workers still gain levetage over families in
part through coercion and fear. The initial
meeting with a worker is mandated, and some-
times, workers say, they feel the need to pressure
families who are refusing services into accepting
them. Typically, they'll use the threat that if
there are subsequent reports, not cooperating
now could make it more likely that they'll have
their children removed in the future.
T
o most New Yorkers, Minnesota. seems
a world away. But in 1999, when the
state decided to pilot a dual track
model, child protective services in Minnesota
were confronting problems familiar to those in
New York. Minnesota investigated 17,000
reports each year, largely among families living
in poor communities and single-parent house-
holds. In about 44 percent of cases, the state
determined that parents had indeed abused or
neglected their children, but only one in four
families received services after the initial investi-
gation. Says Dave Thompson, who has worked
in child protection for more than 25 years and
runs the child protection program in Ramsey
County, which encompasses the city of St. Paul:
"We decided that the system was unnecessarily
adversarial, intrusive and disrespectful. "
In 1999, state officials gave counties the
option of moving ahead with dual track child
protective services. (Today, 62 of 87 counties
participate.) Each county determined which
cases it would classifY as lower-risk. Many decid-
ed that families who'd had a prior investigation
would be excluded, no matter what the allega-
tion. Other counties decided that no case involv-
ing domestic violence, or in which drug use was
the primary allegation, would be classified as
lower risk, because families in those kinds of
cases are particularly likely to have reports called
in on them again in the future. In most counties,
though, between 50 and 60 percent of families
were placed on an assessment track.
For each family going through assessment,
workers in Minnesota receive $2,000 to use at
their discretion. Minnesota took seriously the
idea that families should be in control of what
services they receive, and many families say
they need concrete aid in order just to func-
tion, like a place to live, car repairs, affordable
child care, or help getting the lights turned
back on. A worker might think that parents
CITY LIMITS
".
:lelp you?" rather than, "Have you done something wrong?"
It will be to want to address its problems.
also need anger management classes or family
counseling, but if parents turn down those ser-
vices, according to the law, that's OK.
There are other changes as well. Workers no
longer make unannounced visits. The initial
contact is usually a family meeting, far different
from traditional Minnesota investigations,
where workers not only interview children in
private but also tape record the interview. After
the initial meeting between worker and family,
about one in three families accepts services, says
Suzanne Tuttle, a supervisor in Anoka County.
To be sure, a fair number of families refuse
services and leave caseworkers with lingering
concerns about children's well-being. And
indeed, preliminary research hasn't shown that
children are safer on the assessment track.
Whether they receive an assessment or an
investigation, recidivism rates for families with
similar problems are about equal.
But the data haven't shown that children are
less safe, either, and researchers traclcing statistics
for the state say this is a significant finding.
"The assumption was that an approach that's
adversarial and provokes fear insures child safe-
ty," says Tony Loman, one of two researchers in
charge of studying Minnesota's dual track pro-
gram. "The first thing we wanted to be able to
show was that there was no decline in safety,
and in Minnesota, we did. "
The research also shows that families are
accessing services at a rate fur greater (30 percent
versus only 12 percent of families given a tradi-
tional investigation), and accessing them more
quickly. Researchers say it is still too early to judge
what the long-term effects will be. What is clear
already is that both parents and caseworkers
report being happier wi th the new system. (Infor-
mation about how children feel is not available.)
"Now when I go to a home," says Brenda
Lockwood, a worker from Anoka County,
"parents are usually feeling defensive, they're
feeling threatened. But when I ask them to tell
their story, and I validate who they are as a fam-
ily, I can very quickly see their shouldets go
down, the creases in thei r faces go away."
Last year, Lockwood visited a father who
had lcicked his teenage daughter in the shins
during a fight she was having with her sister.
The gi rl talked about it wi th a school coun-
selor, who reported it. When Lockwood
showed up at the house, the father, a large,
imposing figure, was angry, and his initial
response was to defend himself "He was say-
ing, 'I'm in charge here and my daughter's
going to listen. If she had sat down, I wouldn't
have lcicked her.' He wanted to talk about how
JULY/AUGUST 2003
unjust it was that the report had been sent to
child protection, and how much he loved his
lcids and would die for them. He gave me
about a 10 minute lecture," Lockwood says.
In the past, Lockwood continues, she would
probably have substantiated an allegation of
abuse, given the father a warning, but then,
because the abuse was not severe, would have .
closed the case and left. Instead, Lockwood
told him she thought it was normal for him to
be upset, and he began to calm down.
Then Lockwood asked the daughter to speak.
She was upset that her father had lcicked her but
she was also upset that a report had been filed.
She said she loved her father. The two played
sports together and went to the movies. She also
said that her father yelled too much. The conver-
sation lasted for about an hour. The father
refused Lockwood's suggestion of short-term
therapy. But by the end of the conversation, she
said, he was also willing to say, '''My daughters
are growing up, and I need to be more flexible.' ''
It is possible, of course, that there were far
greater problems in the home than Lockwood
realized. She hopes that if that's the case, the
positive interactions they had with her might
make them consider calling her for help if they
have similar problems down the line. Just as
important, she believes, is that she did not make
the situation worse.
N
ew York State is now talcing a serious
look at legislation that would give
cities and counties the option of
piloting a dual track model.
continued on page 41
27
financial plan homeless economic development budget government officials ethics social programs welfare reform low-
income neighborhoods private sector foundation giving volunteers legislation fiscal year research news legal aid
affordable housing Labor laws Democractic unity services Grants Social services
Bronx Brooklyn Queens Manhatta Working families HIV/AIDS Services
Banana Kelly housing developers s unemployment training programs
Post-9/11 living wage workforce hattan drug addiction charter school
shelter system families evicting h . atory lending financial plan homeless
economic development budget welfare reform low-income neighborhoods
private sector foundation giving YOU ARE :h news legal aid affordable housing Labor laws
Bush administration Democratic Republi ants Social services Bronx Brooklyn Queens
Manhattan Fort Greene Harlem Bloombl lies HIV/AIDS Services Banana Kelly housing
developers lobbyists school system hiring HERE )yment training programs Post-9/11 living wage
workforce development affordable apartm _ 3ddiction charter school shelter system families
evicting housing project public hearings minority pr lending financial plan homeless economic development
budget government officials ethics social programs w 3form low-income neighborhoods private sector foundation
system hiring freeze federal funds unemployment programs Post-9/11 living wage workforce development
affordable apartments Lower Manhattan drug addicti ter school shelter system families evicting housing project
public hearings minority predatory lending programs learings minority predatory lending financial plan homeless
economic development budget government officials locial programs welfare reform low-income neighborhoods
private sector foundation giving volunteers legislation ear research news legal aid affordable housing Labor laws
Bush administration Democratic Republican Comrr .ervices Grants Social services Bronx Brooklyn Queens
Manhattan Fort Greene Harlem Bloomberg Union Drking families HIV/AIDS Services Banana Kelly housing
developers lobbyists school system hiring freeze fed ds unemployment training programs Post-9/11 living wage
workforce development affordable apartments Lower .ttan drug addiction charter school shelter system families
evicting housing project public hearings minorit: ----" --';-- ":nancial plan homeless economic year research news
legal aid affordable housing Labor laws Bush at. .Iocratic Republican Community services Grants Social
services Bronx Brooklyn Queens Manhattan Fort ..rlem Bloomberg Union rally Working families HIV/AIDS
28
Services Banana Kelly housing developers lobbyists system hiring freeze federal funds unemployment training
programs Post-9/11 living wage workforce development c.. .0rdable apartments Lower Manhattan drug addiction charter
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CITY LIMITS
I N TEL ENe .. f ---
THE BIG IDEA
The Prevention Pretension
Foster care is failing, but
child welfare advocates
can't give in to Bush's
block grant temptation.
By Paul Fain
IN THE PARLANCE of the Bush administration,
phrases like "innovative financing" and "flexi-
bility for states" usually mean "budget cuts."
Why, then, have progressives kept their own
rhetorical guns safely holstered since the presi-
dent applied this language to foster care in his
budget proposal this winter? Even more con-
founding, why are some child welfare advo-
cates actually voicing support?
In one noteworthy example of the truly
surreal battle lines developing on foster care
reform, Senator Hillary Clinton recently
joined with notorious Clinton-hater Tom
Delay, the House Majority Leader, in co-
JULY/AUGUST 2003
authoring a USA Today op-ed on the topic. In
the article, Clinton and Delay say that the
Bush proposal on foster care "deserves careful
consideration" and might "do more to prevent
children from entering foster care, shorten the
time spent in such care and provide more assis-
tance to children and their families after they
leave the system. "
The foster care system indeed appears to be
broken, as governments annually yank obscene
numbers of children from their families and
shuttle them among temporary homes. In 2001 ,
one in 20 children in Central Harlem was in fos-
ter care. For liberal child welfare advocates like
Clinton, perhaps the most attractive aspect of
Bush's plan is the flexibility it would give states
to cut those numbers by redirecting federal fos-
ter care money to family preservation and
recruitment of adoptive parents.
Details remain murky, but some aspects of
this potential panacea have emerged, and it is
safe to say that they constitute a major overhaul
of the child welfare system. In the rush to fIX an
increasingly shaky program, those flirting with
their usual enemies may get more "reform"
than they're looking for.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT began funding foster
care in 1961. It bulked up the child welfare sys-
tem in 1974, when it began also funding pro-
grams to preserve families by preventing the
abuse and neglect that prompts government to
move kids into foster homes. But the two
funding streams are hardly equal. In 2003,
Washington will dish out almost $5 billion for
foster care to support toughly 550,000 chil-
dren nationwide, but only $400 million for the
primary family preservation program.
Foster care is funded through an entitle-
ment system. There are no ceilings for entitle-
ments, because they essentially represent eco-
nomic rights. As long as states meet eligibility
requirements for foster care funds, the feds
have to pony up. New York State currently
receives 50 cents from the federal government
for every dollar it spends on foster care mainte-
nance and administration, helping finance
placements for 53,600 kids in 2000.
29
INTELLIGENCE
THE BIG IDEA
30
NEW REPORTS
They've done something right in Albany: New
York's public disclosure laws for lobbyists are
the nation's fifth best. And we need them,
because the state has 3,332 registered lobby-
ists (second only to California), who spent $92
million last year. Here's what this report says
New York could do to make lobbying even more
transparent: Require lobbyists to submit pho-
tos, detail their spending and disclose their
business connection to politicians. It could
also nix the 25 cents a page charge for copies
of lobbying reports.
"Hired Guns"
Center for Public Integrity
www.publicintegrity.org or 202-41i6-1300
Yeah, there's more than a little irony to the fact
that Freddy Ferrer wrote the introduction to this
report about how the demographics of race and
immigration are changing big cities' political
landscapes. But that aside, the report packs in
lots of useful info. Among the findings: Whites
continue to be over-represented in political
office in both LA and NYC (the nation's two most
diverse cities), while Asians and Latinos are sig-
nificantly under-represented. African Americans
in those cities hold political offices in rough pro-
portion to their populations.
"People & Politics in America's Big Cities"
Drum Major Institute for Public Policy
www.drummajorinstitIJte.orgor 212-909-9663
It's pretty well known that the dramatic drops
in welfare rolls during the late 1990s were
largely driven by big increases in the number
of working low-income, single mothers. How-
ever, as this data brief shows, single women
are rapidly falling back-20 percent of those
newly employed between 1996 and 2000 have
since lost their jobs, boosting unemployment
among single mothers to 9 percent, from 6.9
percent. Single moms with more education
have fared better, leading CSS to recommend
that policymakers allow welfare recipients to
go to school.
"Recession and Reauthorization: The Economic
Downturn and Federal Welfare Policy"
Community SelVice Society
www.cssny.orgor 212-254-8900
The new Bush plan would nix this entitle-
ment system and replace it with a block
grant-a buzzword that pops up a lot in Wash-
ington these days. Block grants are capped, and
come in a lump sum, often with the bulk of the
cash coming up-front. "I am always leery of
block grants. Once they come, they always get
chopped," says Ellie Ward, the executive direc-
tor of Statewide Youth Advocacy in Albany.
"With a block grant you get rid of a child's
right to foster care. "
The Bush budget offers numerous carrots to
make the deal attractive to both states and child
welfare advocates. Under the status quo, to
determine whether a child is eligible for federal
foster care funds, states
across the board, from Medicaid to housing
subsidies. And in each case the traditional
defenders of those programs have quickly
ganged up to frustrate the White House's
efforts. Bur the deep philosophical rift over the
comparative value of foster care and family
preservation complicates matters when it
comes to child welfare. And that divide is the
breeding ground for the odd alliances that are
emerging in this latest donnybrook.
Conservatives think the foster care system is
a resource-draining bureaucracy in which
fmancial incentives work to keep children lan-
guishing in foster homes instead of moving on
to permanent placements. Tom Delay, the
Heritage Foundation
must establish that the
birth family of the child
meets poverry guidelines
that were set in 1996 and
have not been adjusted for
inflation. So with poverry
indicators stuck in the era
of the Gingrich Congtess's
welfare reform, every year
a smaller percentage of
children qualifies for feder-
al foster care funds. Bush's
block grant would wipe
away these arcane eligibili-
ty requirements and the
associated administrative
red tape. Bur, more impor-
tant to advocates like Clin-
ton, it would lump foster
care and prevention
money into one pool,
mandating a base amount
that must be spent on pre-
vention bur allowing states
Financial
incentives
favoring foster
and likeminded folks
rarely meet an entitle-
ment cut they don't like,
and have long advocated
for privatization and
other reductions in foster
care spending. Bur cre-
ative fInancing for foster
care has gained traction
in progressive circles as
well. The plight of 7-
year-old Faheem
Williams, who was
found dead in a locked
Newark basement in Jan-
uary, has brought child
welfare services under
intense scrutiny. And
several recent well-publi-
cized horror stories of
overcrowded and abusive
foster homes have
spurred both sides of the
care over
prevention need
an overhaul, but
jeopardizing
federal funding
is not the answer.
to spend as much beyond that as they like.
Another selling point for the Bush plan is
that the block grants would be voluntary
agreements between individual states and the
federal government. If Congress passes the
proposal, states will then negotiate with feder-
al administrators on the amount of the block
grant. Any state could choose to walk away
from the bargaining table and stick with the
current system of entitlements. But once a
block grant agreement is reached, a state is
locked into a contract for fIve years. And those
that hold on to their entitlements are stuck
with the outdated poverty indicators control-
ling their flow of federal funds.
THIS IS A REFORM formula the Bush adminis-
tration is trying to apply to poverty programs
ideological divide to pri-
oritize permanent homes.
"Even though the city of New York has done
better in recent years, there is still a problem of
children being needlessly placed in foster care,"
says longtime child advocate Richard Wexler,
who heads the National Coalition for Child
Protection Reform.
Wexler argues that the child welfare com-
munity would be foolish to walk away from the
table before hearing the details of the Bush
plan. But he charges that's exactly what the
city's Administration for Children's Services
(ACS) is doing, and he's frantically working to
froth up advocates to stop it from happening.
Wexler claims that at a March symposium held
in Washington, ACS Commissioner William
C. Bell launched into a vociferous attack on the
Bush block grant, citing a failed New York
CITY LIMITS
State experiment with block granting local
funds for a variety of social service programs as
a reason for opposing the plan. (An ACS
spokesperson could neither confirm nor deny
Bell's statements at the conference, and says
that the agency is "not in a position to
respond" to the Bush plan.)
"It provides more ammunition to the Man-
hattan Institutes of the world if we boil all
issues down to 'More money, good; less money,
bad,'" Wexler warns.
Most other prominent national and New
York-based child welfare advocates seem to be
in a wait-and-see mode with the Bush block
grant. Only the Children's Defense Fund has
voiced opposition to the plan, and even that
group's rhetoric was uncharacteristically tenta-
tive, stating in a position paper that "children
could be harmed by such a proposal."
"This might be a lifeline that the feds are
throwing. Sometimes ill-intentioned people
stumble onto something good," Wexler says.
BUT WHILE IT WOULD be a mistake to attempt to
shoot down the Bush administration's trial bal-
loon before its details come into focus, it's a
safe bet that this is a deal that will fail to help
New York City in the quest to protect vulnera-
ble children-particularly in the context of
state and local budget deficits.
Mayor Bloomberg has proposed cuts of
more than $200 million to the Administration
for Children's Services in the next fiscal year. If
New York Ciry were to experience a glut of
children needing foster care, and the federal
government was not obligated to reimburse
state and local funding, it's unclear where the
resources to respond would come from.
The block grant would also benefit New
York less than it would most other states.
According to Roseana Bess, a research associate
at the Urban Institute, the number of children
currently in a state's foster care system would
likely determine the funding level for the block
grant. But New York has done a better job than
many other states in reducing the number of
children stuck in long stays in foster homes.
These good deeds, Bess notes, would not go
unpunished: "There are winners and losers to
doing a block grant."
The financial incentives in the system
Wexler calls "the foster care industrial complex"
Planning for Communities, Cities
and the Environment at Pratt.
Pratt's planning programs prepare students with the theory and skills necessary to respond to the diverse needs of
communities and foster comprehensive social, physical, economic and environmental development. Through courses,
studios and fieldwork, students leam both the principles and the practice of participatory, equity-focused urban planning.
The faculty, which includes practitioners from every arena of planning, introduces students to the real-life challenges
of urban development by engaging them in projects in New York City.
The Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment offers:
Master of Science degree in City and Regional Planning
Master of Science degree in Environmental Planning
Joint degrees combining planning with law or undergraduate architecture
Concentrations include:
Community development with a focus on diversity issues, participatory planning, housing, economic development
Environmental planning with a focus on environmental justice, environmental policy, monitoring, regulatory controls
Preservation planning with a focus on integrating historic preservation with
community development
Physical planning, land use and urban design
Pratt
Draw it. Build it. Make it.
Courses are offered in the evenings at Brooklyn and Manhattan campuses to
accommodate working professionals.
JULY/AUGUST 2003
INTELLIGENCE
THE BIG IDEA
do need an overhaul-foster care pays, preven-
tion does not. But jeopardizing federal funding
is not the answer; most flaws can be fixed with-
in the entitlement system, by establishing a
flexible mix of prevention services and foster
care. A bill introduced this April in the House
by Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel and others
would increase funding for substance abuse
programs and improve accountability by creat-
ing a $500 million grant that would reward
agencies for reducing long-term stays in foster
homes. It would also base foster care funding
eligibility on current welfare standards rather
than 1996 poverty indicators.
All of the improvements proposed by this
bill would be made within an entitlement sys-
tem, which maintains a child's right to federal
funding for foster care. That way, if New York
experiences a jump in demand for child welfare
services, the state and the city won't get left
holding the bag. As Ward puts it, "Life gets in
the way of all of these plans. That's why enti-
tlements are important. "
Paul Fain is a freelance journalist m
Washington, D. C.
Pratt Institute
Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment
200 Willoughby Ave., B r o o k ~ n . NY 11 205
(718) 3994314 ext. 100 email: gradplan@pratt.edu
31
INTELLIGENCE
CITY LIT
Homelessness Reconsidered
Assessing two decades of research and activism.
By Bob Roberts
Reckoning with Homelessness
By Kim Hopper
Cornell University Press; 271 pages; $19.95
IN 1981, THE YOUNG ETHNOGRAPHER Kim
Hopper and his colleague Ellen Baxter pub-
lished the nrst extensive documentation of
modern-era homelessness in New York City-
dubbed Private Lives/Public Spaces-adding
their voices to a rapidly growing public outcry.
The Reagan recession and a push to move peo-
ple out of mental institutions were combining
with a massive loss of housing stock to send
thousands onto the city streets and into public
shelters. Moral ourrage was building: there were
marches and protests, demonstrations and the-
atrical "fasts to the death" by activists like Mitch
Snyder (he carne close a couple of times).
The dispossessed had just sued the state-
and won! The 1979 class action Callahan vs.
Carey established the legal rights of New York's
homeless to a minimum of services, including
shelter. The momentum generated in New
York City ultimately led to the passage of the
federal McKinney Act in 1986, which dedicat-
ed hundreds of millions of dollars to a dizzying
array of programs across the country, from
schooling for homeless children ro treatment
for the mentally ill. Kim Hopper, as a
researcher and activist-he was among the
founders of the National Coalition for the
Homeless-was part of this movement.
But moral outrage fizzled and a crisis
became chronic-then merely a problem,
another fact of New York life. More than 20
years later, Hopper has offered us a reassess-
ment. In Reckoning with Homelessness, the
Columbia University anthropologist mixes the-
ory, ethnographic fieldwork, history and remi-
niscence to produce a both readable and
exhaustive look at America's modern struggle
with homelessness.
Hopper focuses on homeless men, in part
because there's more research on this group to
examine, and more importantly because of the
enduring stigma they've suffered throughout
American history. Yet Reckoning is neither a
romantic plunge into the depths nor a dry cat-
alogue of the habits of the disaffiliated. Hopper
explores these men's lives on their own terms.
32
His primary purpose is dispelling our collective
illusions about the homeless, for only clarity
can make effective action possible. And his
challenges are aimed not only at the powers-
that-be, but at fellow activists and anthropolo-
gists as well.
AFTER OPENING Reckoning with the requisite
academic press overview of his methodology
and theoretical framework, Hopper offers a
useful thumbnail sketch of emergency shelter
in New York City, both formal and informal.
There are enduring themes. From the estab-
lishment of the House of Correction, Work-
house, and Poorhouse in 1734, to the present
day, the municipal response to homelessness
has lurched from one ludicrous makeshift solu-
tion to another.
Those of us who are appalled by Mayor
Bloomberg's proposal to house the homeless in
an abandoned jailhouse should remember that,
throughout the latter half of the 19th century,
the police were charged, first informally and
then by law, with caring for the indigent. Every
night, thousands slept on the floors of over-
crowded station houses across the city, each
with "his boots as a pillow and his coat for a
covering"-much as families still do at the
Emergency Assistance Unit in the Bronx.
In 1909, public outcry over this system led
to the creation of the first modern warehouse
for the homeless: the Municipal Lodging
House, which in turn was quickly over-
whelmed by the unemployed during the
depression of 1914 and 1915. Of course, even
back then social scientists attempted to ascribe
homelessness to anything but the loss of liveli-
hood. Cutting-edge eugenicists invented scien-
tific terms like "moron" to describe people who
they identified as socially dysfunctional, rather
than examining the barriers to their participa-
tion in society.
But the meat of Reckoning comes from
Hopper's 25 years of fieldwork. He's at his best
when he carefully reexamines his earlier docu-
mentary work in order to present the rrue
nature of his subjects' lives.
When Hopper began his research into what
would later become Private Lives/Public Spaces,
he set out to provide a simple answer to a ques-
tion today's politicians and municipal policy
wonks still ask: Why don't people like our pub-
lic shelters? Hopper's account of the infamous
men's shelter on Ward's Island, drawn direccly
from his field notes, depicts shelter life at its
worst: abusive and indifferent staff; mayhem
among the guests; the old and incapacitated
left to fend for themselves. "'Do you really
want to see how they treat the group down
here?'" Hopper remembers a resident asking
him. "When I nodded, he told me to go into
the bathroom, where I found a man cleaning
the floor. The man's shirt was stiff with dried
blood from, it turned out, two stab wounds he
had received the night before. Both wounds
were open .... He was mopping the floor at the
staff's instruction."
The Bowery flophouses were not much bet-
ter for the "ticket men" who, until recently,
received vouchers from the city to pay for a dor-
mitory. The threat of physical violence was less
present, but life in the filthy upper floors of
these decaying tenements was an open invita-
tion to despair. Their residents were pariahs
even among those deemed second-class citizens.
In contrast to the conditions these publicly
subsidized options presented homeless men,
life in the steam tunnels under Grand Central
made a kind of sense: access to food from
parked trains, hot water taps and sinks nearby
CITY LIMITS
and the possibility of a degree of privacy. The
decision to dwell underground is not sympto-
matic of some inherent disorder; it's simply a
logical adaptation to circumstances. Not that
Hopper recommends it. As one old-timer told
him, 'The loneliness, it's not good. You get
used to it, but it's not good."
Anecdotes such as these illustrate Hopper's
willingness to be an attentive witness rather than
impose his research agenda upon his subjects. A
striking example is his study of the people he
found living at "Metropolitan Airport" (a careful-
ly chosen pseudonym to fend off unwanted pub-
licity for those who might still call it home).
Beginning in the 1960s, reportS started surfacing
about surprising numbers of mentally ill people
showing up at airport terminals around the coun-
try. A couple of British
homeless black men. Hopper believes that shel-
ters serve as a kind of safety valve for overstrained
black kinship networks. But he's not working
from his own observations here, and the chapter
lacks the incisiveness of the preceding ones.
Things are further complicated by continuing
debates over the nature of the black extended
family and the validity of invoking "culture" in
social research (especially the racially charged
designation "underclass"). In his defense, Hopper
is always honest about the limits of our under-
standing, and he offers the following as just a
working hypothesis: "When market losses in
affordable housing and decent work are coupled
with the mounting strains on extended families,
feminization of familial discipline, the growth in
the drug trade, and continued failures, homeless-
ness seems an all but
researchers offered varied,
somewhat fanciful explana-
tions-the airport as symbol
of departure, perhaps a desire
to visit a national monu-
ment-before concluding
simply that homeless people
found it easy to blend in, and
thus avoid harassment, at an
airport. But American experts
made a beeline toward pathol-
ogy. One study's title summed
up the feeling of domestic
observers: ''Airport wandering
Emergency
housing just
might be the
wrong issue to
focus on.
foregone conclusion."
Reckoning con-
cludes with some
pointed advice for
researchers and advo-
cates alike. Activists
have made some real
gains over the years,
particularly in pushing
governments to rapidly
move people out of
shelters and into per-
manent housing
as a psychiatric symptom." In
these researchers' eyes, the homeless who gathered
at airports were driven "to outrun their problems,
their symptoms, and their failures."
The real reason that the homeless flock to
airport terminals, as you've probably guessed, is
bathrooms-that, along with snack bars, air
conditioning, good security and a reasonably
friendly staff.
HOPPER'S RESEARCH OBSERVATIONS are dead-
on because they so ofren favor the obvious over
the recondite. But then, homelessness itself is
becoming an ordinary---ofren repeated---experi-
ence in the lives of the poor. Intermittent home-
lessness is turning into a way of life. Hopper
believes this to be the case particularly among
poor African-American men, who cross back and
forth between home, shelter and the street,
depending on circumstances and situations.
But here he runs into difficulties. Because
African-American men have increasingly swelled
the ranks of the homeless in the last few decades,
Hopper feels obligated to treat the subject as best
he can. However, by his own admission, there is
a real lack of current research on the lives of
JULY I AUGUST 2003
(which has raised a
sticky ethical question:
Do those in shelters have a right to jump the
housing queue?). But it's hard to avoid the con-
clusion Hopper and others arrive at-that all of
these efforts have ultimately been a dismal fail-
ure. Why? They just keep coming!
"The lines of those 'exiting' from homeless-
ness were replenished because of the vast num-
bers of near-homeless who kept joining them,"
Hopper writes. "'Emergency' measures are
stymied by such substitution effects whenever
the generative forces behind the crisis go
unchecked. " In other words, emergency hous-
ing just might be the wrong issue for policy-
makers, activists and researchers to be focused
on. According to Hopper, advocates have
trapped themselves within the narrow scope of
an endless wrangle with government over the
legal right to emergency shelter at the expense
of broader issues oflivelihood and housing that
keep so many on the brink of destitution. As
long as these remain unaddressed, the moral
affront of homelessness will remain a day-to-
day part of our life .
Bob Roberts is a Bronx-based freelance writer.
INTELLIGENCE
CITY LIT
NOW READ THIS
Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen
By David Hilfiker, MD
Seven Stories Press, $18
It's easy to treat the premise of this book with
skepticism: A doctor who works with homeless
men with AIDS in Washington, D.C., explains the
roots of urban poverty over 50 years. But Hilfiker
ably synthesizes the forces that have transformed
neighborhoods into poverty centers-and some-
how turns out a history that's informative and
readable. Everything's in here, from the Great
Migration to TANF, plus AFDC and the War on
Poverty. It's perfect for undergraduates-or even
seasoned urban activists who need a refresher.
Between Ocean and City: The
Transformation of Rockaway, New York
By Lawrence Kaplan & Carol P. Kaplan
Columbia University Press, $27.50
This cogent history of New York's Siberia details
how the Rockaways went from being a virtually
all-white resort area to a racially divided com-
munity with the most housing projects and
group homes in the five boroughs. There's a lot in
here. Master builder/destroyer Robert Moses
plays a starring role. So do 1950s city officials
like Welfare Commissioner Raymond Hilliard,
who deliberately packed public assistance recip-
ients into the Rockaways-which is more than
an hour away from most jobs by mass transit.
Stir it Up: Lessons in Community
Organizing and Advocacy
By Rinku Sen; Jossey-Bass, $25
The Ms. Foundation for Women sponsored this
detailed guide on how to do everything from build
membership to plan effective actions. Sen, who's
been a community organizer for more than a
decade, buttresses the book with real-life exam-
ples. She adds O&As at the end of each chapter,
guiding organizers to make their work more effec-
tive. That's all good, but the prose itself is often
rather dense-a dumbing-down could have
made this a more valuable effort.
33
INTELLIGENCE
MAKING CHANGE
--"'-
.-- - ............ ...l ..
-- .' ' ... . : ~
" - ~ , ....
J I
---,
.",
o
j
t
.
!
Civics as a
Second Language
The new ESL teaches
immigrants how to
stand up for themselves.
By Debbie Nathan
WHEN BELLA YAKUBOVICH and Alexandra Sviri-
dova carne to a City Council hearing a few
weeks ago, they did not have on smart jackets
or expensive lipstick like most of the women
officials in the room. The two elderly immi-
grants from the former Soviet Union wore sen-
sible skirts and sensible sweaters. They were
there to defend English classes at senior centers
against impending budget cuts, and as they
34
literacy funding that Congress first allocated in
2001. Annually, New York State gets over $10
million, with most of it going to New York
City. For literacy educators, the new resources
are a welcome replacement for earlier federal
money, which got pegged to job-seeking rather
~ ' .1 than to citizenship-building efforts during the
~ ~ late 1990s zeitgiest of workfare.
.-.... . . '*-:-; As the name implies, EL-Civics combines
- - .- _ .. ~ language and civics training in one class. Many
~ ESL instructors are still old school: they still
....; give students fill-in-the-blank exercises with
! irregular verbs, have them memorize the three
1 branches of government and teach them how
to balance a checkbook. But for an increasing
number, says Ira Yankwitt, director of adult lit-
--
took turns at the microphone, each first eyed it
for a moment, as though collecting time to
make their language sensible, too.
"We want to tell a doctor about our prob-
lems," 71-year-old Yakubovich explained, try-
ing to make the audience understand the value
of her English class. "We want to go to the
movie theater. Watch TV To understand."
"We would like to meet and speak with
neighbors," added Sviridova. "We have to know
history and culture of country where we live.
We ask you: Help us become complete citizen."
The listeners were rapt.
Yakubovich's and Sviridovas English is not
perfect. But a growing breed of ESL educators
are teaching immigrants like them that spotty
language skills needn't keep them from talking
at hearings and otherwise acting like citizens-
even if they haven't been naturalized, and even
if they have no papers at all. The new teaching
approach, often called "English Literacy-Civics"
education (EL-Civics for short), is spreading
through heavily immigrant U.S. cities on the
strength of $70 million dollars a year in federal
1 eracy services at the New York City-based Lit-
eracy Assistance Center, language teaching is
no longer solely dependent on textbooks. Nor
is civics just "about field trips to the bank or
City Hall, " he says. "It's about critiquing the
banking system."
CAROLYN GRIMALDI is an instructor at the Cen-
ter for Immigrant Education and Training at
laGuardia Community College. A few weeks
ago, she started teaching a group of rank begin-
ners. On a recent afternoon, she wrote "New
York City" on the blackboard and, under that,
two columns labeled "Positive" and "Nega-
tive." Under "Positive," the class of some 25
mostly Latin Americans enthusiastically pro-
duced fillers. "Good hospitals," said a gray-
haired man from Colombia. "Good universi-
ties," another student added. "Many cultures!
Different foods!" offered another, which led to
a list of culinary nationalities that in New York
could just as easily represent people: "Chinese."
"Brazilian!" "Italian!"
Under "Negative," the students con-
tributed: "Too expensive." "The weather no
good-very cold." "It's dangerous some
place." Grimaldi gently corrected-"Some
places are dangerous" -and the student who'd
made the error echoed her without seeming
chastised. "Here is much cockroaches," said
one woman, and now several others jumped in
as teachers: "A lot of cockroaches!" In the end,
no one had opened a textbook, but the class
had used dozens of new words and several
grammar structures.
Then Grimaldi wrote their phrases on a
"Problems: Solutions" chart, beginning with,
"New York is too expensive."
"What's the solution?" she asked.
"Move!"
"Do you want to move?"
"No!" the students yelled, and the class rang
CITY LIMITS
with new suggestions: "Buy from 99-cent
stores! Shop at Costco!"
The exercise is about far more than learn-
ing English. Grimaldi says her students are
"getting used to the idea of posing problems
and identifYing solutions." Later, she will
guide them in articulating and analyzing an
issue-perhaps the fact that their communi-
ties suffer disproportionately from health
problems like diabetes and asthma. After
choosing the problem, EL-Civics students
often learn to do internet research to identifY
social service agencies and local politicians
who can help with solutions.
With the teacher's assistance, they may act
as playwrights, inventing dialogues berween an
immigrant and an indifferent bureaucrat, says
Hillary Gardner, who teaches advanced-level
EL-Civics at laGuardia. A cranky official may
warm to an immigrant who knows how to say,
"Have a nice day, " "Good morning" or "Thank
you" with the cheerful inflection that native
speakers use to sway reluctant public servants.
"I have students keep a journal to record con-
versations they've had in English," Gardner
says. "I want them to get out, listen and think
about what makes a good interaction." Pro-
ducing their own vocabulary and grammar for
these efforts, they tend to remember far more
than they would from a textbook. They gain
knowledge of how things in their new country
and ciry work, knowledge they may pass to
families and friends. They develop a voice,
both private and civic. They take control of
their new lives.
Students swear by the new pedagogy. "My
personal problem is losing my nervous for
talk, " says Nelly Diaz, who was a nurse in
Ecuador before immigrating to New York City.
"We learn about everything here," adds Lina
Villarejo, a 19-year-old Colombian who hopes
to be a U.S. journalist. "English in the street, in
the newspaper. Life in the United States .... I
like this method. You feel motivation. You
feel happy."
IN NEW YORK CITY, Grimaldi, Gardner and
other EL-Civics teachers have learned their
new pedagogy in seminars developed recently
by the Literacy Action Center-better known
as the LAC. The LAC is currently helping
some 60,000 New York City adults improve
their English. Many speak it as their first lan-
guage but srruggle with reading and writing.
Others are immigrants grappling with a brand
new tongue. For about 15 years, according to
LAC's adult literacy services coordinator, Win-
ston Lawrence, his organization and other
JULY/AUGUST 2003
groups have been incorporating the notion of
"participatory literacy" into their work.
The concept originated with Brazilian edu-
cator Paulo Freire, author of the worldwide
besrseller Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Part Marx-
ist and part Christian mystic, Freire-who died
in 1997-felt that traditional education rein-
forces elite power over poor people. It does
this, he believed, by setting teachers up as
authorities who "deposit" knowledge into
empty-minded studenrs, much as investors
deposit money in a bank. If they get any edu-
cation at all, poor people emerge from this
teaching identifYing with elites. Or they accept
their oppression, feeling too ignorant and pas-
sive to challenge it.
As a remedy, Freire proposed a teaching
method that recognizes that poor students
"It's not just
about field
trips to the
bank," says one
teacher.
"It's about
critiquing the
banking system."
bring a wealth of knowledge and wisdom to
class. The trick is to articulate and apply it.
Freire believed that teachers should help stu-
dents name their problems, redefine them as
collective rather than personal, figure out the
causes and work together on solutions. Accord-
ing to this thinking, literacy skills are not dry
lessons from textbooks. They develop as people
labor in groups to improve their communities.
They flow from civic life.
LAC's Lawrence says that "participatory lit-
eracy" theory was first practiced a generation
ago in developing regions such as the
Caribbean, Africa and Mexico. By the early
1990s, it was being spread to the United States
by people like Klaudia Rivera. Today Rivera is
INTELLIGENCE
MAKING CHANGE
an education professor at Long Island Univer-
sity's Brooklyn Campus; back then she directed
the El Barrio Popular Education Program, in
East Harlem.
Studenrs at El Barrio were mostly Puerto
Rican and Dominican women; many had been
laid off from garment industry jobs and faced
ongoing cuts in their unemployment and wel-
fare benefirs. As children, many had been too
poor to go to school. At El Barrio, they
improved their literacy in both Spanish and
English. They told and wrote stories about
their lives. They used computers and audiovi-
sual technology to investigate community
problems like irregular trash collection and
dilapidated housing. They visited the Upper
East Side to ask affiuent whites what they
thought of Latino immigrants (most said
immigrants were good for the city). They made
videos about their research that were aired on
community-access television and by other
activist groups.
The program and others like it ended,
Rivera says, when the welfare reform act of
1996 tied funding for literacy and ESL to the
requirement that studenrs find jobs. "They had
to spend their time doing resumes and training
for interviews," she remembers. But now, with
the new infusion of EL-Civics money, "there's
an opportunity to play" again with participato-
ry literacy concepts.
The results are visible citywide. At Brooklyn
College, 400 students in the Adult Literacy
Program wrote letters to Senators Charles
Schumer and Hillary Clinton, protesting pro-
posed cuts to their program. In Washington
Heighrs, Northern Manhattan Improvement
Corporation teacher John Lyons' EL-Civics
students researched housing problems. Some
students ended up circulating peti tions for
Uni6n Comunal de Washington Heighrs, a
group organizing against impending changes in
rent policy that would harm low-income ten-
ants. And at the Jewish Community Center of
Staten Island, Bella Yakubovich and Alexandra
Sviridova decided to go to City Hall to defend
English classes for seniors.
Not every class produces such palpable
action-but that's OK with the educators. Par-
ticipatory literacy methods may not lead to stu-
dents taking to the streets, Winston says, "but
they may take horne what they learn and give it
to family members."
"Should they be demonstrating?" asks Gard-
ner. She's not sure. But she does believe that her
teaching helps immigranrs "become advocates
for themselves." And when that happens, she
says, real civic engagement can follow .
35
INTELLIGENCE
NYC INC.
Working
Assets
Why it pays to pay to keep
people on the job.
By Bruce G. Herman
WHAT IF TAXPAYERS had a choice: We could pay
people unemployment benefits when they lost
their jobs, or we could put the same amount of
money into a program that required them to
continue working for their benefits, allowed
them to take home their full salaries and keep
contributing to the tax base, and was likely to
lead to continued employment?
Sound like the kind of magic fiscal conserv-
atives would do if they had wands?
Well, guess what. We're talking about wage
subsidies, and the time to start using them in
New York City is now.
New York's economy was already in a reces-
sion when our city was attacked on September
11, 2001. The attacks accelerated the crisis,
turning a downturn into a free fall-and we
have yet to hit bottom. The magnitude of the
city's job loss since the beginning of the current
recession is staggering: Almost a quarter of a
million jobs are gone-223,400 or 5.9 percent,
according to the Fiscal Policy Institute-with
no clear opportunity for recovery on the hori-
ron. According to the Center for an Urban
Future, in 2002 New York City accounted for
97 percent of the state's job losses, and an
incredible 18 percent of the national job loss-
es--even though the city has only 42 percent
of all jobs in the state and 2.8 percent of jobs
in the nation. More than 300,000 of our fellow
New Yorkers are unemployed, and many have
exhausted their unemployment benefits. Tens
of thousands were never able to access unem-
ployment benefits at all. And the current likely
scenarios being discussed to deal with the fiscal
crisis, especially Mayor Bloomberg's plan to lay
off thousands of municipal workers, would
only exacerbate the pain and cloud the future
for more of New York's working families.
For those supply-siders who get hives at the
mention of direct, demand-side, public invest-
ment in wages, and who wheeze at the words
"deficit spending," it is time to revisit the eco-
nomic lesson of the Great Depression: In times
of slack private-sector demand, the way to stop
36
A project of the Center for an Urban Future
the downward spiral is not to cut taxes and
municipal services in the hopes that more
money in people's pockets will trickle up to
businesses-it is to invest public money in
stimulating economic growth and labor-mar-
ket demand.
Wage subsidies are one straightforward way
to do that, and a program we ran at the Con-
It is ti me to revi sit a
lesson of the Great
Depression: The
way to stop the
downward spiral is
to invest public
money in stimulating
economic growth.
sortium for Worker Education (CWE), a non-
profit provider of workforce training and edu-
cation programs, suggests that such an
approach could be a quick, cost-effective way
to keep people on the job, off the welfare rolls,
and contributing to the tax base.
After September 11, 2001, CWE's assis-
tance efforts included an employment-stabi-
lization and job-creation program designed to
provide wage subsidies to businesses. To this
end, CWE created the Center for Workforce
and Economic Development (CWED), which
allocates wage subsidies to small and mid-sized
businesses so that they can keep workers
employed, rehire those who have been laid off,
or hire new workers.
The program, which is still in progress but
closed to new applicants, has produced substan-
tial results over the past year. It meted out almost
$15 million in grants to more than 300 employ-
ers to rehire, retain and/or promote over 3,000
workers, in industries including the arts and
entertainment, transpottation, health care, hos-
pitality, food service, retail, construction, manu-
facturing, IT, communications and finance.
The grants provided wage subsidies of
berween 50 percent and 60 percent of an
employee's base salary for a period of 90 days.
This kind of cap not only sharply limits the
public outlay involved, it also requires the
employer to match the investment, compelling
private firms to leverage the public funds-a
far cry from the endless gravy train that many
imagine. The grants were tailored to the needs
of each industry, but the basic program applied
effectively across the board-in other words,
there was no need to reinvent the wheel for
each sector that received assistance.
Accountability was another crucial element
of the program. CWE did not simply write
checks. It required businesses to provide
detailed financial information, including tax
returns and payroll records documenting a neg-
ative economic impact on their businesses
directly following 9/11, to establish their eligi-
bility before their applications were even
reviewed. CWE then required monthly invoic-
es from each employer whose application was
accepted, to ensure that the subsidies were
going to real employees. We monitored
grantees in other ways as well, including col-
lecting detailed demographic information
about the individuals being employed, to pre-
vent the system from being abused.
It is hard to argue with the results. Companies
were offered an incentive of an additional 1 0 per-
CITY LIMITS
cent if they retained an employee, at their own
cost, an additional 90 days after the end of the
grant. Of the 74 companies that have reached
that milestone, 91 percent have accessed the 10
percent incentive for at least some employees. Of
those who responded to an exit survey, 69 per-
cent said they continued employment for all sub-
sidized individuals for 90 days beyond the term
of the subsidy. And some 83 percent of respon-
dents said their businesses were stronger than
they were before the subsidies.
That's because, unlike unemployment or
welfare checks, wage subsidies not only assist
individuals, they benefit businesses.
Take for example Tech Sew Manufacturing,
Inc. Immediately after the attacks, their
employees, who depended on the transit sys-
tem, were unable to commute to this China-
town-based garment manufacturer. Transporta-
tion of raw material and finished products was
also disrupted because of the numerous road
closures and restricted bridge and tunnel access.
Average monthly sales fell 34 percent. The
$101,600 wage subsidy allowed Tech Sew to
retain 25 workers. This enabled the company to
continue to bid on new work as opportunities
arose. They were not only able to keep their
JULY/AUGUST 2003
workforce intact through this difficult time,
they have since added three new employees.
The ripple effect can go well beyond the
directly subsidized employees, or even the
company receiving the subsidy.
The Queens Theater in the Park received a
wage subsidy of $80,000 through CWED's
program, which allowed them to return 13 staff
members, whose hours had been cut back, to
full-time status. This in turn allowed the theater
to go forward with 12 performances which were
in jeopardy of cancellation, and a festival that
was slated to be significantly scaled down.
"We were able to employ all those artists,
plus we have a large part-time casual labor force
that only works if there's a show," explains Jef-
frey Rosenstock, the theater's executive direc-
tor. "We use an average of five stagehands and
seven front-of-house workers-box office staff,
ushers, etc. As for the ripple effect-the person
who was hurting the most was my vendor, the
guy who fills my vending machines. He also
did a lot of the airport hotels, so he was really
suffering. Then there's the trolley driver, who
shuttles people &om the subway to the theater,
the car services-a lot of people who would
have lost work and didn't."
INTELLIGENCE
NYC INC.
And for the supply-siders in the crowd,
carefully crafted, well-monitored wage subsi-
dies also put more money in people's pockets,
as well as into the public coffers.
Unemployment Insurance in New York
state covers half of an employee's wages or
salary, up to $405 per week-roughly the
same percentage that CWED's wage subsidies
provided workers, who earned up to $810 a
week or $42,120 a year. Although unemploy-
ment benefits are taxed, those receiving them
would be taxed on half as much money, and
likely at a lower rate, than they were at full
salary. In addition, basic unemployment bene-
fits are available for 26 weeks (not including a
possible 13-week extension)-more than
twice as long as CWED's wage subsidy last-
ed-and, after that, without additional public
investment in training, placement and other
services, the next stop is welfare. Once all ben-
efits are exhausted, as they were by so many
following 9/11, these former workers are no
longer paying taxes, or buying consumer
goods, or, o&en, paying their mortgages, car
loans or other debts. And the jobs they once
held frequently evaporate for good, weakening
businesses, which results in more layoffs, and
37
INTELLIGENCE
NYC INC.
ultimately, bankruptcies.
This is already happening. Sectors such as air
transport, food services, hospitality and apparel
manufacturing have not recovered from the
steep job loss that occurred as a result of the eco-
nomic aftershocks of the terrorist attacks. And
according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, many
industries not directly impacted by the attacks
have fared no better: Employment in the com-
puter-services sector is down by 40 percent;
advertising employment is off by 25 percent.
But even for the most directly affected business-
es, recovery is possible. One company with feet
in two hard-hit industries, Flying Food Group,
lost 15 percent of its airline-food business-sev-
eral million dollars in revenue-when airports
were closed after 9/11. It was forced to layoff
125 people, and as tourism dropped, the com-
pany's losses continued. A wage subsidy allowed
Flying Food Group to retain 47 workers, which
carried it through its most difficult period, after
which it was able to increase its workforce to
over 100 at company expense.
Happy endings are unfortunately the excep-
tion, not the rule, in the current economy. And
as if the official 8.8 percent unemployment rate
wasn't sobering enough, the truth is that even
Commitment is
those numbers do not reflect the depth of the
work crisis in the city. Incomes, especially
wages, have taken a disproportionately large
hit: The toral private-sector wage decline was
10.1 percent from the first half of 200 1 to the
first half of 2002, while job decline for this
period was 5 percent. Many communities, par-
ticularly communities of color, are experienc-
ing double-digit unemployment, exhausted
benefits, and limited prospects for new
employment. Mortgage foreclosures are on the
rise, and there are now a record 76,000 indi-
viduals and families in the city's homeless ser-
vices shelter system. The number of families in
temporary housing has increased 85 percent
since 2000, to 9,200. Hunger is also growing.
Something must be done, and now.
CWE is one of very few organizations in the
city currently using wage subsidies-in part
because the idea meets with so much reflexive
resistance from those who see them as another
government handout. As it has become clear,
however, that traditional job-training support
for dislocated workers is often not enough to
fmd them new jobs in the current climate,
there are those who have begun to open their
minds to the idea. CWE's 9/11 relief program
was funded through a direct federal alloca-
tion-a total grant of $32.5 million-almost
half of which went to wage subsidies. It was
made possible by bipartisan support from the
New York state congressional delegation, as
well as advocacy from the labor and business
communities. There are substantial resources,
both public and philanthropic, including more
than $1 billion in community-development
block grants at the Lower Manhattan Develop-
ment Corporation, that have been allocated to
assist in New York's recovery, and which could
provide direct help to many more businesses
and individuals if more of those who adminis-
ter these funds made the mental leap.
Wage subsidies have great potential as a tool
to help address the needs of both businesses
and workers who remain adversely affected by
9/11, as well as possible application in the larg-
er jobs crisis. Now is the time to look seriously
at that potential, and to start putting our
resources into programs that put New Yorkers
back on the job .
Bruce G. Herman is the director of the Center for
Workforce and Economic Development at the
Consortium for Worker Education.
Tomorrovv starts today
Deutsche Bank's commitment to
global corporate citizenship recognizes a
responsibility to improve and enrich the com-
munities throughout the world in
which we conduct business.
With a focused strategy of support for com-
munity development, the arts and the envi-
ronment, Deutsche Bank partners with local
organizations to build a brighter future.
leading to results TM
Our commitment to a better tomorrow
starts today.
Deutsche Bank IZl
38 CITY LIMITS
Close
Company
continued from page 21
further is rosy- nationally, property owners
fail to pay $12 billion in taxes each year. That
explains why the company has recently hired
lobbyists in New Mexico and Texas.
Despite the massive scale of New York's tax
lien sales program, it has so far received vety lime
attention from the press or policymakers. What's
perhaps the most remarkable is that, a full seven
years afrer it began, no one has even asked funda-
mental questions about the program's impacts.
What happens to properties that go through
tax lien sales? If they're residential, are they more
likely to be fixed up? Are tenants who live in those
buildings better off? In single family homes,
where thousands of liens have been sold in neigh-
borhoods like those in southeastern Queens, are
desperate homeowners being driven to take out
predatory loans, as anecdotal evidence suggests?
Do tax lien sales feed the wave of home foreclo-
sures that has swept New York City in previous
years? For vacant lots, or abandoned factories or
warehouses that have gone through tax lien sales,
is any new development happening? Or is there
just speculation, which is driving up land prices
but not leading to community development?
"We'd like to think that cities would look at
tax lien sales and the auction process as an
opportunity to promote community revitaliza-
tion, and not only recoup taxes," says Carey
Shea, a program officer at the Surdna Founda-
tion who has studied property tax policies in
various American cities. "It seems like a real
missed opportunity to look at these properties
in tax arrears as only a chance to increase tax
revenue, as opposed as to an opportunity to
look at issues like the shortage of housing and
land we have here in New York City."
JER, for one, publicly trumpets tax lien
sales-and even auctions- as good public pol-
icy, regardless of outcome. JER staffer Linda
Scanlon, in an essay for the magazine Public
Management, writes that in New York City, tax
lien foreclosures have "significantly decreased
the number of boarded-up and abandoned
buildings." Yet when asked by City Limits what
proof the company has for that statement, JER
says it has no empirical data.
AFTER THE JULY BID FIASCO,
The Point flipped out. Convinced the bidding
process had been rigged in favor of Selechnik,
Lipson sent angry letters outlining the unsa-
vory story, with a particular emphasis on the
"winning" bid that Michelle Lynch had asked
JULY/AUGUST 2003
them to lower, to everyone from Mayor
Bloomberg to the president oOE Robert Com-
panies, Joseph Robert.
Their outrage-and threats to sue-bore
fruit. While never addressing questions about
the July bid, JER told The Point it would open
up the bidding again in August. This time, The
Point bid $625,000-and won.
But JER's love affair with Jacob Selechnik
didn't end there. When JER sent The Point a
sales agreement via email, it included language
that demanded that The Point "hold harmless"
Jacob Selechnik for "any and all claims, causes
of action, of any kind whatsoever, arising from
the subject property, including without limita-
tion, fines, fees, costs and penalties associated
with the environmental clean up."
When Paul Milmed, a private attorney
working for The Point, refused-"The Point is
not prepared to indemnify Jacob Selechnik
under any circumstances, and frankly we do
not understand what interest the Trust and/or
JER could possibly have in requesting such an
indemnification," he wrote-JER backed
down, and the sale went through. On Septem-
ber 17, 2002, the Point officially became the
owner of 1391-99 Lafayette Avenue.
For his parr, Selechnik is flabbergasted that
The Point thinks he has a special relationship
with JER After all, he points out, JER did ulti-
mately sell the old factory to them-not him.
"The people from The Point used political mus-
cle," Selechnik says. ''They have means and ways
of getting city agencies to do what they wanted. "
Nonetheless, Lipson and The Point's attor-
neys aren't the only ones who are currently
questioning JER's tight relationship with
Selechnik. The city's Department of Investiga-
tion is looking into the matter, collecting doc-
uments and interviewing witnesses, but as of
press time had yet to finish its investigation.
Although it got its property, The Point's not
in much of a celebratory mood. After the group
closed the deal in September, it entered a frus-
trating period of negotiation with the city
Department of Environmental Protection over
fmes for the environmental contamination that
was discovered afrer the fire [see "Brownfield
Blues," April2003J . A still-angry Suchman calls
DEP's actions-which resulted in more than
$50,000 in fmes for The Point-"overzealous,
misplaced enforcement."
Lipson has lime ire toward Selechnik, whom
he figures was just trying to make a buck. It's
JER's actions that anger him. "I expect Selechnik
to behave the way he did," he says. "But people in
government, or companies that have government
contraCts, shouldn't be in bed with guys like him."
The irony is that Selechnik should have never
been allowed to even bid on 1391-99 Lafayette.
After the City Council raised concerns when the
tax lien sales program was first created, JER
began to require any individual or company that
buys a property at an auction to sign an "affi-
davit of responsible purchaser." The affidavit,
among other things, requires that the purchaser
certify that neither he nor affiliated parties
(including immediate family) owns a property
that has an average of five or more "hazardous or
immediately hazardous" violations of the city's
housing code per unit.
But, according to HPD records, two buildings
in Jacob's or Ellen's names have far more than five
immediately hazardous violations per apartment.
For example, 16 East 177th Street, owned by
Ellen Selechnik, has 58 in 11 apartments.
THIS FALL, THE CITY
Council and Mayor Bloomberg will have an
opportunity to raise questions about the tax
lien sales program-if they have any. The
entire tax lien sales program, also known as
Local Law 36, expires on October 31.
One Councilmember whose opinion mat-
ters-David Weprin of Queens, who chairs the
Council's fmance committee and will be charged
with taking a look at the program-says he has
no concerns about tax lien sales, although he did
tell City Limits that he hasn't had much chance to
study it yet. "I think it's a good program,"
Weprin said. "Something we want to extend."
About the only council member who has
shown any interest in tax lien sales is David
Yassky, who represents Brooklyn waterfront
neighborhoods that include Williamsburg,
Greenpoint and Brooklyn Heights. Yassky is
planning to propose that the council create sever-
al pilot "exclusion" programs for waterfront and
industrial properties, similar to what HPD does
now with troubled apartment buildings. The idea
is to pull a handful of properties out of the lien
sales each year that, like 1391-99 Lafayette, might
be good candidates for waterfront housing or
parks development, or for manufacturing build-
ings that could work as incubators for small busi-
nesses. Then, the city would donate or sell these
selected properties to interested developers, like
HPD does with third party transfer for housing.
The Council may tinker with the program,
but neighborhood activists like Jim Buckley,
executive director of the University Neighbor-
hood Housing Program in the Bronx, say that
what bothers them the most is how little they
know about tax lien sales--even when its
impacts are happening right under their noses.
"It's something we'd love to take more of a
look at," says Buckley. When he asks city agency
officials what they know about the impact of tax
lien sales, "everyone agrees they'd like to know
more, too. " That knowledge is critical, he
argues, so that together, activists and bureau-
crats can ask-and answer-a key question:
"Can some of these pieces of land be used to
make our communities better?"
39
COLOSSAL WASTE
continued from page 16
collected by DOS, Houston-based Waste Management handles 58 percent
of the city's trash-almost all the residential waste nom Brooklyn and the
Bronx, one-third from Queens, and all of Staten Island's trash. It also col-
lects and dumps a significant portion of the city's commercial waste stream.
Waste Management is a company that is built on realizing profits
from trash, profits that increase with volume. Since its creation in
1968-consolidating two waste companies in Chicago and one in Flori-
da-Waste Management has grown to be the world's largest trash han-
dler. In the process, it has len in its wake hundreds of investigations into
fraud, price-fixing, toxic dumping and criminal conduct. In June 2000,
the company serried a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Com-
mission, which charged that, among other violations of accounting pro-
cedures, the company had misled investors by overestimating volume at
landfills and raising prices to levels that clients simply refused to pay.
Without admitting or denying guilt, the company agreed to restate
its profits, but it didn't get off so easily with shareholders, who through
a class action lawsuit forced WMI to cough up $457 million in penal-
ties. Then, in March 2002, the SEC charged six former top-ranking
executives at WMI with hiding earnings, selling stock at inflated prices,
and failing to record millions of dollars in expenses related to unsuccess-
ful landfill development projects. When the improper accounting was
revealed, stock prices dropped by 33 percent, costing shareholders over
$6 billion. The company later admitted that, between 1992 and 1997,
it had overstated its profits by $1.7 billion.
Any company that competes to take away trash and rurn it into recy-
cling is a threat to Waste Management, points out Peter Anderson, a con-
sultant with the Center for a Competitive Waste Industry, a nonprofit
that tracks the waste management industry. "For the past 20 years, Waste
Management, Allied/BF! and Republic have been trying to lock down
control of landfills, because if you can't empty a truck in a landfill, you
can't compete" in the garbage export market, points out Anderson.
According to the San Diego-based newsletter Solid Waste Digest,
Waste Management owns 17 of the 42 landfills in the greater New York
area. The biggest two, in Pennsylvania, take upwards of 5,000 tons of
trash from New York City daily.
"Everybody knows that costs in the solid waste market are going up,"
observes Kelman. "There's only a few companies that can handle the vol-
ume" put out by New York City. As landfills start to close up, he says,
the city will have to search farther afield for alternatives. "People know
they have New York over a barrel."
The farther waste haulers have to travel to deposit trash, the higher
the costs. Last summer, Pennsylvania upped its surcharge on all waste
coming into its landfills from out of state from $2 to $4 a ton, points
out Tom Outerbridge, president of City Green, a recycling company in
Manhattan. Not only are landfills near the city filling up, "but there may
also be some cost increases that are simply the opportunity the private
sector sees in charging a higher fee, because they have a corner on the
market." Outerbridge cites a survey put out by Solid Waste Digest, esti-
mating a 63 percent price increase at mid-Atlantic landfills by 2010.
"The handwriting is on the wall. Everybody and their brother in the
waste industry knows that New York City is completely incapable of deal-
ing with its own solid waste, because it has no solid waste disposal sys-
tem," observes David Biddle, executive director of the Greater Philadel-
phia Recycling Council, a nonprofit that develops solid waste manage-
40
ment programs. Of course costs were going to rise for New York City,
maintains Biddle. "It's market economics. You guys don't have landfills.
You have limited space, you are asking companies to handle ungodly
amounts of solid waste whether you recycle or not .. . with limited land-
fills, that's just supply and demand." A bigger problem is coming down
the road, warns Biddle. New York has been trucking its waste to counties
surrounding Philadelphia for years, and in five years, he estimates, there
will be a big problem: Philadelphia and New York will compete for the
same landfills, driving up costs on dumping fees even further.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania, under pressure from residents unhappy
about being the region's dumping ground [see "Wretched Refuse,"
November 2002], has ceased issuing permits for new landfills. It is also
stopping garbage trucks for even small violations. "If Pennsylvania dries
up, which is what Pennsylvania is trying to do, the haul cost could essen-
tially double," agrees Peter Anderson.
Waste Management maintains that it's offering a fair deal for New
York, on recycling as well as waste export. (It bid on the recycling con-
tract, at $82 a ton.) A New York lobbyist for the company, former City
Council Speaker Peter Vallone, says the company is the best equipped to
handle the city's recycling, because it already handles 75 percent of the
city's trash. "I think they do a good job," says the former speaker, whose
lobbying firm, Constantinople Consulting, is on a $15,000 a month
retainer with Waste Management. When asked why Waste Management's
bid to handle the city's recycling was so much higher than Hugo Neu's, at
$82 versus $51 a ton, Vallone dismissed the question. "I wouldn't know
anything about that," he says, adding that Hugo Neu may be tallying up
costs differently than Waste Management in its bid proposals. "I would
check that dispariry-that they're counting different things."
But Vallone's old council colleague, Sanitation and Solid Waste Com-
mittee legislative attorney Carmen Cognetta, says the city can't afford
the status quo. "This is a tremendous expense," says Cognetta of the cash
paid to companies like Waste Management to remove the city's daily
trash. "Twelve thousand tons a day, six days a week, 52 weeks a year-
and multiply it by an average of $70 per ton. The more you recycle-
the less [trash] you send out-makes it less expensive. The question is,
how do you make it work?"
Recycling supporters inside and outside the city government say the
problem is not just that the garbage hauling-and-dumping companies
are doing business as usual-it's also a business-as-usual mentality that
pervades Sanitation. Change "takes leadership," points out Cognetta.
"You need leaders who talk about what will happen down the road."
Visy Paper in Staten Island had to make a serious effort at lobbying
before it won the bid nom Sanitation to handle the city's paper recycling,
paying the city $7 per ton it picks up. The example illustrates Sanitation's
reluctance to think outside the box, says Yassky: "It tells you that the
Department of Sanitation is very good at running a fleet of trucks and
picking up trash, but it is absolutely terrible at managing the garbage
problem in a creative and innovative way. It has an absolutely zero track
record on that. They insisted that recycling was a sinkhole, and then
Hugo Neu comes along and says we will actually pay you for the plastic
and metal."
In Yassky's view, Sanitation's vision crisis goes much deeper than a
failure to embrace specific innovations. "This is the most jerry-rigged,
Scotch Taped-together policy operation I can imagine," says Yassky. "We
fell into a way of getting rid of trash when Fresh Kills was closed. The
city had no idea how to get rid of [its trash], and did whatever they could
to get through the week. Here we are five years later, getting through the
week without any long-range planning for a more rational solution."
Kelman says his company has been moving ahead with its plans to
build the Bronx recycling facility, and it has already located industries,
such as paving stone companies and construction businesses, that can
CITY LIMITS
use recycled glass in their manufacturing. The
site will have the capacity to load and unload
barges simultaneously---cutting down on the
cost of truck trips moving recyclables around and
ourside the city. And plans are being laid for the
facility to be able to handle paper recycling,
along with plastic and metal.
"The city is going to be pleasantly surprised"
with the cost savings it will see if it awards Hugo
Neu the full recycling bid, predicts Kelman.
"We're so confident of the true market--even if
we lose the bid, we don't lose. " Looking out for
irs own business interesrs, Hugo Neu has also
proved something of great public benefit: For the
city, recycling works, and pays.
As Kelman sees it, the garbage hauling corpo-
rations are never going to be good at promoting
recycling, because their business model depends
on large returns, which they need to payoff debrs
they incurred buying big landfills. Recycling, he
believes, calls for an entirely different kind of
economic thinking-but one that's less rigorous.
"In the end, recycling has got to be a business,"
says Kelman. "And it has to be a good business,
otherwise it won't work. "
Ruth Ford is a contributing editor at Habitat mag-
azme.
Safe
and Sound
continued from page 27
Much of the momentum comes from the
efforrs of Karen Schimke, director of a child wel-
fare research and advocacy organization, the
Schulyer Center for Analysis and Advocacy. In
the mid-1990s, Schimke was commissioner of
the Department of Human Services in Buffalo,
and she had come in contact with her share of
"CPS junkies"-workers who "wanted to be lit-
tle cops. I even had CPS workers who wanted to
carry guns." But in general, she says, it was not
individual workers but the system irself that
made it difficult to work positively with families.
At Schuyler, Schimke took a close look at
what Minnesota and other states were doing,
and she helped drafr legislation to make it hap-
pen in New York. Two different versions
emerged: The Democrat-led Assembly sought
to launch dual track in up to 10 localities, while
the Senate would have kept that number to just
three. The bills gathered broad support. Last
year, the assembly bill passed, and the Senate
came surprisingly close to passing irs version.
The climate for reform is considerably worse
JULY/AUGUST 2003
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this year, with legislators far more concerned with
addressing the budget crisis than with introduc-
ing policy legislation. Most child advocates are
simply trying to hold the line in the face of curs.
Officials in Westchester County decided
they didn't want to wait for state legislation,
and they plan to launch a dual track model in
Mount Vernon and Peekskill later this year.
The legislature is considering a bill that would
exempt Westchester from the child protective
procedures the rest of the state must follow,
including the requirement that agencies must
mark all cases as "indicated" or "unfounded."
Nancy Travers, first deputy commissioner
for social services, says Westchester is a prime
county to pilot dual track because it has a well-
developed child welfare infrastructure and is
"very service rich. " Over the last year, officials
have also worked hard to recruit informal fam-
ilyallies, like churches and community groups.
"We're trying to find out who Mom turns to
during difficult life situations," Travers said.
"Does she turn to the person in the nail salon,
or a person in her church? Or maybe there's an
aunt who helps her who could drive Johnny to
his therapy appointmenrs if Mom is feeling
overwhelmed. " Travers says the goal is to
involve the entire community in taking respon-
sibility for making sure children are neither
abused nor neglected. "Even at irs best and
even with unlimited resources, " Travers argues,
"government alone cannot keep children safe."
Dual track is also about to get a tryout in one
New York City neighborhood. ACS has been
meeting with several private foundations to pilot
a project in the Highbridge section of the Bronx,
one that would go even further to involve an
entire community in keeping children safe.
Highbridge has one of the highest foster care
placement rates in the city, and irs streers and
homes are rife with many of the forces---pover-
ty, violence, domestic violence, drugs, crime-
that typically put children at risk for abuse and
neglect. At the same time, notes David Tobis,
executive director of the Fund for Social
Change, which is helping launch the project, it
is also a community with a strong social service
infrastructure and active community groups.
About a year ago, the Fund for Social
Change and the Open Society Institute, began
working with community members to crafr a
proposal that would establish Highbridge as a
demonstration project for dual track. Each
foundation agreed to contribute a quarter of a
million dollars to the project, which has a total
budget of about $610,000. (Some of the social
services will be provided through organizations
that already do this work under contract with
the city.) The foundations hoped their commit-
ment would be an incentive for the city to agree
to the project. Indeed, Tobis says he has been
both "surprised and encouraged" by the interest
41
ACS has shown so far, and he's optimistic that
dual track, in some form, will be in operation
later this year. ACS still needs to make at least
one big commitment: It has yet to decide which
kinds of cases it will allow to proceed with an
assessment and services, and which cases will
still be subject to a full investigation.
Tobis and the residents of High bridge hope to
do far more than simply change how abuse and
neglect reports are handled. The foundation
money will be used to increase preventive services
not only for families on an assessment track, but
also for everybody in the neighborhood, so that
fewer families reach a crisis or become the sub-
jects of an abuse or neglect report. The funders
have also committed to improving legal repre-
sentation for parents being investigated by child
protective services. The proposal further calls for
funding grassroots organizing to strengthen par-
ents' and children's voices regarding policy and
management of the child welfare system. Says
Tobis: "We're trying to reduce the number of
children who are inappropriately placed in foster
care. We're trying to test a new approach to child
welfare where everybody in a neighborhood gets
the supports they need."
I
n Highbridge and everywhere else, referring
more families to preventive services would
cost money, which is terribly difficult to get
in these times of massive budget deficits. [See
"The Prevention Pretension," page 29].
For the last two years, New York's preventive
services have been paid for through a matching
fund system: Cities put up 35 percent of the
cost of services in return for 65 percent from
the state. The formula has the potential to
increase the overall money that counties and
cities spend on preventive services. But to bring
in the funds, budget-strapped communities
must make an expensive commitment up
front. And New York City, for one, is reluctant
to make that investment: It is now moving to
cut preventive services by 18.5 percent.
Gail Nayowith, executive director of the
Citizens' Committee for Children, says that
while she favors legislation permitting experi-
ments like the one in Highbridge, she thinks
passing a full-fledged dual track law, without
securing significant funding for the necessary
social services, would put kids in danger. "I'm
not willing to risk child safety in this kind of
environment, when kids and families don't
have access to preventive services when needed,
or foster care when necessary," says Nayowith.
"To pretend right now that it's not a money
issue is just erroneous. "
Preventive services, she says, must be univer-
sally available. "There would have to be a ser-
vice guarantee for families, regardless of their
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status." As she looks at dual track as it has been
implemented elsewhere in the U.S., Nayowith
says she has "lingering concerns that the level of
funding for preventive services is inadequate."
Nayowith points out that a record number
of children already receive preventive services
via ACS. Assessment for services, she notes, is
already part of what investigators do: "Its reduc-
tive to think that Child Protective services'
function is limited only to investigations. Good
investigation presumes good assessment."
Other observers agree the existing frame-
work could be put to more effective use.
Maryanne Forjay, a professor of social work at
Fordham University who worked in child pro-
tection for years, has been lobbying the state to
change the way it trains mandated reporters--
teachers, doctors, police and social service
workers, who are required to make a report to
the state if they suspect a child is being abused
or neglected. These professionals account for 60
percent of reports.
When mandated reporters believe a child is
"at substantial risk of harm," the law requires
that they call in a report to the State Central
Registry. "When someone sees injuries to a
child-bruises or burns-there's not much
choice what to do," notes Forjay. But in other
kinds of circumstances, if mandated reporters
were trained to know how to connect children
and parents to community-based organizations
that could help them, she suggests, they might
not feel that the risk to children was so high.
"How you define substantial risk of harm can
be dependent on what support services you
have in place. What we've found across the
board is that in trainings of mandated
reporters, often there's not even a mention of
the preventive services structure."
As for dual track, however, Forjay remains
skeptical. "The truth is," she says, "an investiga-
tion is not all that friendly, and it never will be."
Schimke herself acknowledges that dual track
is a political compromise. "We have such a
shaved point of view, shaved by practice over the
last 30 years," she says, "that even if I thought it
was right to move everyone into assessment, peo-
ple would say I was being soft on bad parenting."
Still, Schimke believes dual track is the compro-
mise with the greatest chance of reforming child
protective services right now. "If we wait," she
adds, "we will have penalized generations of fam-
ilies. How long are we going to excuse misbehav-
ing with families? I know for myself I can't."
Rachel Blustain is a Brooklyn-based Jreekznce
writer and a contributing editor to Foster Care
Youth United. Reportingfor this article was done
in association with the Center for New York City
Affairs at New School University. In July, the
Center will publish a full report on the options for
dual track child protection in New York.
CITY LIMITS
ADVERTISE IN
CITY
LIMITS!
To place a classified ad in
City Limits, e-mail your ad to
advertise@citylimits.org or fax
your ad to 212-479-3339. The
ad will run in the City Limits
Weekly and City Limits mag-
azine and on the City Limits
web site. Rates are $1.46 per
word, minimum 40 words.
Special event and professional
directory advertising rates are
also available. For more infor-
mation, check out the Jobs
section of www.citylimits.org
or call Associate Publisher
Susan Harris at
212-479-3345.
RENTAL SPACE
SPACE WANTED - Wanted Urban Develop-
ment Sites. Vacant - Improved - Brownfields.
Throughout the NYC Metro Area and New Jer-
sey. All offerings promptly considered. Lee-
wood Real Estate Group. 260 Christopher
Lane, Staten Island, NY 10314. R. Randy Lee
718-983-8800.
SPACE AVAILABLE - Forming group to share
office space on Fifth Avenue at 28th Street at
cost to participants. Space will be built to our
needs, so there is flexibility from 88 to 500
square feet. Call Teresa at 212-889-1101;
email Calabrese@jps.net
SPACE AVAILABLE - Beautiful sublet space
available, newly renovated, move-in condition!
3,171 square feet on West 36th Street. Private
entry, bathroom, passenger and freight eleva-
tor. FUll-service building with on-site super and
hands-on management. Very aggressive Rent.
Barry Goodman 212-372-2243
SPACE AVAILABLE - Soho Comer Office: Secure
10' x 16' Office w/12' loft ceiling within congenial
Architectural Firm. Views & shared access to Con-
ference, Resource Library, Kitchen & Blueprint
machine. Convenient to Subways (Canal St.), rent
is $1500Jmonth. Contact Michele Boddewyn:
email: mboddewyn@gaynordesign.com or call
212-334-0900.
JOB ADS
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT - for high vol-
ume workload serving the HIVIAIDS population
JULY/AUGUST 2003
in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Must have strong skills
in Word, Excel, and QuickBooks. Bookkeeping
skills required. Must be task oriented and able
to work independently. Please fax resumes to
718-852-4805 Attn. Debbie Welch
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT - The Neigh-
borhood Economic Development Advocacy Pro-
ject (NEDAP) seeks an administrative assis-
tant. 30-hours/ week. Excellent benefits. Pay
commensurate with experience. Submit
resume and cover letter to: Anna Kalthoff,
NEDAP, 73 Spring Street, Suite 506, New York,
NY 10012. Fax: 212-680-5104. Apply by fax or
mai l only. For more information visit our web-
site www.nedap.org. People of color strongly
encouraged to apply.
ADMINISTRATIVE-DELIVERY OPERATIONS
ASSOCIATE - God's Love We Deliver is a NYC
non-profit, non-sectarian organization provid-
ing meals and nutrition counseling to individ-
uals with serious illnesses. We seek a Delivery
Operations Associate to provide administra-
tive support to the Director of Delivery Opera-
tions. Candidate should possess 2 years expe-
rience in del ivery operations with an emphasis
on administration & planning, hold a clean
NYS drivers license and have a NYC DOH Cert.
and/or Servsafe Cert. (can be obtained within
3 months of employment). Excellent communi-
cation, interpersonal skills and experience in
MS Office 2000. Flexible schedule including
holidays. Send/FaxiEmail resume with cover
letter & salary requirement to: HR, GLWO, 166
Ave. of the Americas, NYC 10013, 212-294-
8101, recruitment@glwd.org.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR DR ASSOCIATE DIREC-
TOR - for grant-funded project to promote
mental health insurance parity (www.naminy-
cmetro.org). Range of responsibilities includes
planning, analysis, meetings with employers
and legislators, public presentations, writing
and producing reports and educational and
advocacy materials. Requires: excellent com-
munication, public speaking, writing skills.
Desirable: experience with mental health
issues, health/mental health policy, health
insurance industry, advocacy, project adminis-
tration. Salary commensurate with experience.
Request description and send letter, resume,
references to: execdir@naminyc.org.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, PROGRAMS - The
Assistant Director, Programs of the Times
Square will assist the Director in the day-to-
day operations of this 652-unit supportive
housing residence for single adults. S/he will
provide supervision of administrative func-
tions, including recruitment and selection of
staff, and supervise the following units:
intake, tenant compliance, and tenant ser-
vices. The Assistant Director will also meet
with tenants to resolve housing problems or
concerns; mediate conflicts among tenants;
work with social services, security and tenant
compliance staff on tenant safety and behav-
ioral issues. S/he will maintain, review and/or
modify the procedures in place to ensure com-
pliance with Common Ground Community
(CGC) policies and standards and City, State
and federal eligibility guidelines and/or rent
regulations. The Assistant Director may also
function as a CGC management liaison with
community organizations, and with providers
of social and other supporti ve services. Quali-
fied candidates should send cover letter with
Salary Requirements and Resume to CGC
HRlJF, 505 Eighth Avenue, NY, NY 10018 Fac-
simile 212-389-9313.
ASSISTANT MANAGER - The Mount Hope
Housing Company, Inc. a non-profit CDC in the
Bronx, seeks an Assistant Manager for its Asset
Building Program. S/He wil l work closely with
the Program Manager on the administration of
our individual development account program,
facilitation of economic literacy workshops,
outreach, and participant counseli ng. The
Assistant Manager will also be responsible for
daily supervision of AmeriCorps VISTA Mem-
bers. Qualifications: BAIBS degree in educa-
tion, urban studies or related field, minimum 3
years work experience, has experience, knowl-
edge or interest in the home buying process,
small business development and/or education-
al financial aid. Knowledge of Spanish (written
and oral) preferred. Fax or mail cover letter and
resume w/salary requirement to Brenda D.
Jones at 718-299-5623 of MGGC 2003-05 Wal-
ton Avenue, Bronx, NY 10453.
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT - The JEHT
Foundation was established in April 2000 to
support its donor's interests in human rights,
social justice and community building. The
name JEHT stands for the core values that
underlie the Foundation's mission: Justice,
Equality, Human dignity and Tolerance. The
Foundation's Community Justice and Interna-
tional Justice programs reflect these interests
and values. Visit our website www.jehtfoun-
dation.org to learn more about the Foundation.
The Assistant to the President reports directly
to the President of the JEHT Foundation and
provides administrative support to him.
Description/Responsibilities: Screen, route,
and forward President's calls. Maintain Presi-
dent's calendar. Draft and/or type President's
correspondence. Sort President's mail and
respond to inquiries about the Foundation.
Organize and maintain President's files. Com-
municate with Trustees of the Foundation, act
as secretary to the Board and coordinate and
help prepare materials for Board meetings.
Organize President's travel plans, itineraries
and internal meetings. Work on special pro-
jects with the President. Provide back-up sup-
port for other administrative staff of the Foun-
dation as needed. Qualifications: Strong
administrative, organizational , and analytical
skills. Team-oriented, non-hierarchical, antic-
ipatory working style. Excellent writing, edit-
ing and proof reading skills. Creative problem-
solving skills. Excellent oral communication
skills with ability to relate effectively to poten-
tial grantees and other non-profit profession-
als, staff, trustees, and consultants. Comput-
er literacy, including MS Word, Excel and
Microsoft Outlook. Attention to detail. Under-
graduate degree. Minimum 3 years not-for-
profit or foundation experience preferred. A
strong commitment to the JEHT Foundation's
values and mission. How to Apply: Send letter
and resume to: Debra Kendall , Administrative
Director, JEHT Foundation, 120 Wooster Street,
JOBADS
New York, NY 10012 No telephone call s,
please. Salary commensurate with experience;
excellent benefits. The Foundation hires with-
out regard to race, color, reli gion, national ori-
gin, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital
status, or disability. Deadline: May 30, 2003
Start Date: July 15, 2003.
ASSOCIATE CIRCUIT RIDER - Growing
national project empowering grassroots orga-
nizations through technology, seeks individual
with experience in technology and
community organizing. Salary: up to $38K;
good benefits. Persons of color, formerly on
welfare or low-income are encouraged. EOE.
See application requirements at www.lincpro-
ject.org/acr2003.html. Welfare Law Center,
275 Seventh Ave., Ste 1205, 10001. Fax 212-
633-6371, emaillinchire@welfarelaw.org
ATTORNEY - Bronx based Real Estate Devel-
opment and Management Co. is seeking an
attorney with extensive experience in real
estate transactions, housing court, DHCR and
NYC Regulations. Strong analytical skills and
commitment to excellence. Full benefits pack-
age, salary commensurate with experience.
Fax resume and writing sample to 718-299-
6646 or e-mail toresume437@hotmail.com.
ATTORNEY - Real Estate - Staten Island.
Busy firm seeks attorney experienced in resi -
dential lender closings. Send resume and
salary requirement to fax: 718-983-7078.
ATTORNEY, PROJECT DIRECTOR - The Peter
Cicchino Youth Project of the Urban Justice
Center (PCYP) is seeking an Attorney to fill the
position of Project Director. The PCYP is a five-
person interdisciplinary team of lawyers and
social workers serving poor and homeless les-
bian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth
aged 15- 25. We provide free legal and social
work services to LGBT young people individu-
ally and pursue systemic change in New York
City's foster care and juvenile justice systems
on their behalf. The Director is responsible for
securing and maintaining all project funding,
supervising all staff in the project, and admin-
istering the projects' grants and contracts.
Areas of experience must include at least one
of the following areas of law: family law (espe-
cially foster care), immigration law, public
benefits, and/or housing law. Supervisory and
fundraising experience as well as experience
working with LGBT people preferred. A demon-
strated commitment to social justice, includ-
ing equality for low-income people and people
of color also required. Applicants must be
admitted to practice law in New York State and
must possess excellent writing and public
speaking skills. Applicants of color and les-
bian, gay, bisexual , and transgender people
are strongly encouraged to apply. (Salary:
$50,000-$65,000, D.O.E.) Applications should
include a cover letter, resume, and writing
sample, and should be mailed to the Urban
Justice Center at 666 Broadway, 10th Floor,
New York, NY 10012, attn: Susan Hazeldean.
ATTORNEY-IN-CHARGE, CIVIL DIVISION -
The Legal Aid Society of New York seeks an
Attorney-in-Charge to lead its Civil Division
43
JOB ADS
and to join its senior management team in
developing an innovative program of expanded
and integrated services to poor New Yorkers.
The Civil Division of The Legal Aid Society has
the largest unrestricted civil legal services
practice in the country. It provides high-quali-
ty legal representation to more than 25,000
families and individuals annually, while help-
ing tens of thousands of others through its
affirmative litigation and community educa-
tion programs. Through some 240 attorneys,
paralegals, and support staff, and a budget of
nearly $22 million, the division addresses the
civil legal needs of the poor of New York.
Candidates must be attorneys admitted to
practice, preferably with litigation experience,
who can demonstrate success both in
strengthening professional services operations
and in catalyzing organizational change. The
Legal Aid Society is an equal opportunity
employer committed to a diverse workforce and
strongly encourages applications from candi-
dates of color. Direct all inquiries to: Alan Wich-
lei , Vice President and Director or Alison Falk,
Senior Associate, Isaacson Miller:
2610.las@imsearch.com
BUSINESS COUNSELOR - The Business Out- '
reach Center Network, Inc seeks a Business
Counselor for a two-year project to provide busi-
ness, legal, and childcare skills training for low-
income and TANF individuals seeking to develop
licensed childcare businesses. Under the super-
vision of a Project Director, the Business Coun-
selor will provide one-on-one business counsel-
ing, help deliver small business training, and
assist in Project reporting. Qualifications: B.A.
with experience in small business development
or running your own business required. Good
computer, writing and communication skills a
must. Knowledge of childcare sector helpful. Fax
resume and cover letter to: 718-246-1881. Attn:
Daniel No phones calls please. Salary: $32,000
with health benefits.
CASE MANAGEMENT SUPERVISOR - The Cit-
izens Advice Bureau (CAB) is a large, multi-
service non-profit serving the Bronx for more
than 30 years. The agency provides a broad
range of individual and family services, includ-
ing walk-in assistance and counseling, ser-
vices to special-need populations, such as
immigrants, children, adolescents, seniors,
homeless families and singles, individuals
and families affected by HIVIAIDS. CAB pro-
vides excellent benefits and offers opportuni-
ties for advancement. Resumes and cover let-
ters indicating position may be mailed to 2054
Morris Ave. Bronx, NY 10453, or faxed as
directed. The Jackson Avenue Family Residence
seeks a Case Management Supervisor. The
position requires a MSW or a master's degree in
a related field. Responsibilities include welfare
advocacy, housing related issues, case man-
agement and conflict resolution. Fax creden-
tials to W. Cruz at 718-993-1249 or e-mail to
wcruz@cabn.org. CAB is an equal opportuni-
ty/affirmative action employer.
CASE MANAGER - Experienced Case Manag-
er needed to work with the frail elderly popula-
tion in Queens for a 2-3 month period. Position
could become permanent. Candidate must
have a Bachelors degree in Social Work,
44
Human Services, or other related field and
experience in the human service field. Fax
resume and cover letter to Karen Gore, Director
at 718-426-2250.
CASE MANAGER - NYC based non-profit hous-
ing org. seeks qualified candidate for a Case
Manager. Provide case management services at
a Manhattan SRO. Ideal candidate will be bilin-
gual, have a BA and/or at least 3 years experi-
ence working with low-income people with phys-
ical and mental disabilities, substance abuse
issues, HIVIAIDS and medical problems. Good
organizational skills, computer literacy and a
creative approach on problem solving required.
Knowledge of area resources a plus. Salary
based on experience. Please submit cover letter,
resume and salary requirements to: H.S.I., 461
Park Avenue South, 6th floor, New York, NY
10016, Attn: N03. Fax 212-252-9319. EOE
CASE MANAGER - The Citizens Advice Bureau
(CAB) is a large, multi-service non-profit serv-
ing the Bronx for more than 30 years. The
agency provides a broad range of individual
and family services, including walk-in assis-
tance and counseling, services to special-need
populations, such as immigrants, children,
adolescents, seniors, homeless families and
singles, individuals and families affected by
HIV/AIDS. CAB provides excellent benefits and
offers opportunities for advancement.
Resumes and cover letters indicating position
may be mailed to 2054 Morris Ave. Bronx, NY
10453, or faxed as directed. The Bronx Drop in
Center for the homeless, single adults seeks a
Case Manager. The position requires some
experience with substance abuse and mental
illness. BAIBS required and Bi-lingual Span-
ish/English A+. Fax credentials to M. Mason at
718-893-3680 or e-mail to
mmason@cabny.org. CAB is an equal oppor-
tunity /affirmative action employer.
CASE WORKER - Community-based program
for children and families seeks energetic indi-
vidual to provide case management, advocacy,
and referral services. Great opportunities for
group work, community outreach and program
development in our expanding aftercare ser-
vices. Bachelor's degree required. Please fax
resumes and cover letters to Kristin Boyle at
845-279-6726. EOE.
CENTER DIRECTORS - Community Health-
care Network is a not-for-profit organization
dedicated to enhancing the quality-of-life and
promoting health in New York City. Responsi-
bilities: mgmt, coordi nation of all clinical oper-
ational functions. Min BAIBS in public health
administration or related field; 3 yrs expo in pri-
mary cared admin; strong verbal/written com-
munication skills & managerial background
req'd. Knowledge of Spanish a +. Brooklyn
Location. Please forward your resume to the
Human Resources Department, 79 Madison
Avenue, 6th floor, New York, NY 10016 or fax
your resume to 212-807-0250.
CFOIDIRECTOR OF AOMINISTRATION - The
Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) is a large, multi-
service non-profit serving the Bronx for more
than 31 years. The agency provides a broad
range of individual and family services, includ-
ing walk-in assistance and counseling, ser-
vices to special-need populations, such as
immigrants, children, adolescents, seniors,
homeless families and singles, individuals
and families affected by HIV/AIDS. CAB pro-
vides excellent benefits and offers opportuni-
ties for advancement. Resumes and cover let-
ters indicating position may be mailed to 2054
Morris Ave. Bronx, NY 10453, or faxed as
directed. CAB seeks a CFOIDirector of Adminis-
tration to oversee fiscal, technology, procure-
ment and physical plant functions. Supervise
Controller, Technology Coordinator and Pro-
curement Director. Oversee development
of/adherence to fiscal systems & internal con-
trol policies, develop/monitor agency & pro-
gram budgets, and manage investments &
assets. Implement technology plan & ensure
that systems support agency work. Improve &
enforce procurement procedures, oversee bid-
ding & vendor selection process, and negotiate
vendor agreements. Establish standards for
facilities management, and oversee operations
policies & practices, including insurance,
health & safety, and compliance. CAB is a 31-
year old settlement house with 400 employees,
15 sites and a $17 million budget. Masters
degree required (MBA, MPA, MSW or JD). Strong
fiscal and supervisory experience, and excel-
lent writing and organizational skills required.
Excellent benefits, Salary negotiable. Send
resume and salary history to Karen Courtney at
fax number 718-365-0697 or e-mail
kcourtney@cabny.org. CAB is an equal oppor-
tunity /affirmative action employer.
CHIEF ACCOUNTANT - The Salvation Army is
looking for a Chief Accountant. The position
reports to the Director of Programs and Direc-
tor of Finance and Administration. Hours: 35
hours per week -8:30am - 4:00pm Monday -
Friday and is classified as non- exempt.
Responsibilities: Generates timely financial
statements. Assigns and distributes fiscal
responsibilities, in consultation with the Direc-
tor of Finance and Administration. Creates and
applies fiscal controls and procedures within
the Accounting Department. Monitors all SSFA
budgets. Conducts periodic audits. Maintains
communication with the Salvation Army
Greater New York Chief Accountant and Busi-
ness Manager, providing relevant fiscal infor-
mation as required. Responsible for all finan-
cial procedures and records. Reviews daily
cash flow reports and analyzes as required.
Coordinates year-end audit review and prepa-
ration for external audit. Qualifications: A
Bachelor's Degree in Accounting, or Finance
with a minimum of six years supervisory expe-
rience (OR) Master's degree in Accounting or
Finance and two year's supervisory experience.
CPA preferred. Salary: Depending on experi-
ence. Submit resume and salary requirements
to: Gopika Desai , Manager of Human
Resources, The Salvation Army, 120 West 14th
Street. 7th floor, Via Fax: 212-337-7279. No
telephone Calls. Resumes submitted without
salary history will not be considered.
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICERNP - Westch-
ester nonprofit seeks a senior level person
experienced in all phases of affordable hous-
ing development. Individual will assist Presi-
---- ------------
denVCEO in overall administration of the orga-
nization with emphasis on housing and eco-
nomic development, property management
and related social services. Ability to supervise
a multi-disciplinary staff in a high pressure
environment. Excellent oral , written, analytic,
organizational and interpersonal communica-
tion skills required. Masters degree in a relat-
ed field preferred. Competitive salary. Compre-
hensive benefits. Send resume to
PresidenVCEO, IFCA, PO Box 790, Ossining, NY
10562 or fax to: 914-941-7392.
CLINICAL COORDINATOR - The Clinical Coor-
dinator is responsible for supervision and direct
oversight of a core services team of five case-
workers. This position has significant decision-
making, supervisory, administrative, program
management and service delivery responsibili-
ties. The Clinical Coordinator must have a thor-
ough clinical understanding of the populations
served and a demonstrated ability to teach and
guide others in good practice. This position is
central to fostering the mission and goals of the
project and agency and should be able to
ensure staff productivity and the achievement
of measurable outcomes and recipient satis-
faction. Reqs: CSw. Minimum of 3 years applic-
able experience with related populations
including supervisory, administrative and man-
agement experience. Strong writing and verbal
communication skills. Computer literacy. Bilin-
gual SpanishlEnglish a plus. Training experi-
ence preferred. Salary: $46,459. Benefits:
compo bnfts incl $65/month in transit checks.
Send resumes and cover letters by 6/2/03 to:
Michael A. Etheridge, CUCS/Times Square
COMMUNITY ASSOCIATE - West Side (Man-
hattan) Community Board seeks part-time
Community Associate to process citizen service
requests; provide administrative support to
Board; work with District Manager on projects.
Qualifications: knowledge of City government,
good computer and interpersonal skills, self-
starter, community development experience.
Salary $12-$17 per hour, up to 25 hours per
week. Community Board 4 is an Equal Employ-
ment Opportunity Employer. Send resume and
cover letter via mail, fax or e-mail to Manhat-
tan Community Board 4, 330 W. 42nd St., 26th
fir, NYC 10036. Fax: 212-947-9512. E-mail:
info@ManhattanCB4.org. For more informa-
tion, visit www.ManhattanCB4.org.
COMMUNITY LIAISON/SCHEDULER - NYS
Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick is looking
for a Community Liaison/Scheduler for her dis-
trict office. The Liaison would be responsible
for keeping the Assemblymember's schedule,
providing constituent services, and represent-
ing the Assemblymember at meetings and
public hearings. Must be computer literate,
available for some evening meetings, and have
excellent communication and writing skills.
Knowledge of New York City politics is a plus.
Salary commensurate with experience and
great benefits. Please fax resume and cover
letter to: Karen Feuer 212-674-5530 or email to
glickd@assembly.state.ny.us
CONGRESSIONAL CASEWORKER - Casework-
er position available in busy Brooklyn Congres-
sional office. Position requires experience in
CITY LIMITS
intervention with governmental agencies on
behalf of constituents seeking assistance
related to housing, public benefits, etc. Must
be fluent in Russian, computer literate, have
strong writing and communications skills, be
able to attend community day and evening
meetings and be well organized. Competitive
salary and excellent benefits. Please e-mail
resume and cover letter via email to "Casework
Position" at leah.kane@mail.house.gov, via
fax to 212-367-7356 or mail to: 201 Varick
Street, Suite 669, New York, NY 10014.
CONTROLLER - Westchester's leading non-
profit housing and social service agency seeks
a highly experienced person for this high pro-
file position. Responsibilities include supervi-
sion of accounting staff, financial statement
preparation, GAAP compliance, federal state
and local grant compliance requirements,
meeting applicable governmental audit stan-
dards and assisting with annual budget
preparations. Ideal candidate will have strong
computer/written/oral/interpersonal skills. A
BA in Finance/Accounting and minimum of 5
years of managerial level accounting required.
MBA in Finance/Accounting and/or CPA pre-
ferred. Experience with non-profit accounting
a+. Send resume/letter with salary history to
Director HR, Westhab, 85 Executive Blvd.,
Elmsford, NY 10523, email: h.r@westhab.org
Fax 914-345-3139. EOE
COORDINATOR - The American Red Cross is
seeking a Coordinator, Client Eligibility and
Services Mental Health & Health Services. The
coordinator oversees the eligibility and enroll-
ment process for mental health program and
supervises eligibility staff. Candidates must
have excellent customer service, supervisory
experience, good clinical judgment, policy-
writing experience and knowledge of excel to
produce reports. MSW degree, C.S.w. and min-
imum of 2 years experience working in a clini-
cal mental health setting is essential. To apply
put up a profile at www.redcross.orgljobs.
Click on National Job Opportunities.
COORDINATOR, VOCATIONAL COUNSELING -
Gay Men's Health Crisis seeks Coordinator of
Vocational Counseling to be responsible for the
overall operation of its new Return to Work pro-
gram. Specific responsibilities include assess-
ing eligibility of candidates for RTW services,
working with candidates on Individual Employ-
ment Plans, providing educational and voca-
tional guidance services and individual job
readiness counseling. Other duties include
counseling clients regarding behavior and
adjustment problems to prepare them to attain
vocational goals, conducting weekly pre- and
post- employment groups, assisting MTS job
developer with determination of appropriate
transitional and permanent employment posi-
tions, and completing reports for funders.
MAIMS in Vocational Rehabilitation Counsel-
ing or related field preferred, BNBS required.
Proven experience in counseling in a vocation-
al rehabilitation setting, knowledge of the
labor market and world of work required. Excel-
lent interpersonal and assessment skills,
knowledge at HIVIAIDS issues, computer liter-
acy necessary. Strong presentation skills a
must. Detail oriented regarding client behavior
JULY/AUGUST 2003
and documentation of service provision. Abili-
ty to work successfully in a team. Bilingual
EnglishlSpanish preferred. Qualified individu-
als should send resume with cover letter that
must include salary requirement to GMHC, HR
Dept., 119 West 24th Street, New York, NY
10011, or electronically to jobs@gmhc.org.
GMHC values diversity and is proud to be an
Equal Opportunity employer.
DEPARTMENT ASSISTANT - The Mount Hope
Housing Company, Inc. a non-profit CDC in the
Bronx, seeks a Department Assistant for the
Department of Community Development. The
Department Assistant will work closely with
the Vice-President and Capacity Coordinator
on various reception, office management and
administrative tasks. This staff position
requires an enthusiastic employee with excel-
lent writing, communication and organization
skills to ensure smooth department operation.
Strong customer service orientation and pro-
fessionalism are musts. Qualifications: BA or
Associates Degree and 2 years work experience
preferred. Strong interpersonal skills, strong
personal management skills, detail oriented,
ability to troubleshoot in a small office setting,
computer proficiency (word processing, data-
bases, basic desktop publishing using
Microsoft Office tools). Spoken and written
Spanish proficiency preferred. Fax or mail
cover letter and resume w/salary requirements
to Candice Fletcher at 718-299- 5623 or MHHC
2003-05 Walton Avenue, Bronx, NY 10453.
DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR COMMUNICATIONS
- Alliance for Quality Education. NYC.
Statewide coalition of 220 organizations dedi-
cated to providing all children with a sound
basic education seeks Deputy Director for
Communications to develop and implement an
effective communications strategy for the
organization. AQE actively seeks a diverse
staff. Full details available at www.aqeny.org.
Send resume, cover letter to info@aqeny.org
DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONAL - NYC office
of Nat'l org. dedicated to helping low-income
communities find creative solutions to prob-
lems of affordable housing seeking Develop-
ment Specialist to be responsible for a portfolio
of current and prospective corporate and foun-
dation donors, including cultivation, steward-
ship and delivery of proposals and reports.
Requires Bachelors degree and a min. of 5
years progressively responsible experience. For-
ward resume with cover letter and salary
requirements to fax 410-772-2702, e-mail
hr@enterprisefoundation.org (with HRIDS-NYC
in subject line) or mail to: The Enterprise Foun-
dation, ATTN: HRlNYC, 10227 Wincopin Circle,
Suite 500, Columbia, MD 21044. EOE MlFNIH
DIRECTOR OF ADMINISTRATION - This lead-
ership position requires a highly organized,
enthusiastic self-starter, able to multi-task.
Must have strong people and computer skills
with the ability to communicate and supervise
off-site personnel. Liaison with central admin-
istration on human resource and budget
issues. Must be able to work well in fast-paced
environment and solve problems. Responsible
for management of special projects. Familiar-
ity with modem computer operations including
word-processing, Excel required. Previous
administrative experience a plus. Salary com-
mensurate with experience; excellent benefits.
Please send cover letter and resume by May
2,2003 to: Veronique Questel, Legal Aid Soci-
ety, Juvenile Rights Division, 304 Park Avenue
South, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10010, Fax: 646-
654-7080. Women, people of color, gays and
lesbians and people with disabilities are
encouraged to apply.
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT - Center for
Urban Community Services (CUCS) , a national
leader in housing and services for homeless
people, seeks a dynamic, results- oriented
Director of Development. The position reports
directly to the Executive Director. Responsibili-
ties: plan and execute a comprehensive and
aggressive fundraising program. Requirements:
must be well-versed in foundation, corporate
and individual gift solicitation, capital cam-
paigns and special events; a proven results--ori-
ented track record through a diverse and incre-
mental development plan; Bachelor'S degree
plus 5 years of successful fundraising experi-
ence; strong organizational, written, interper-
sonal and computer skills; the ability to manage
multiple projects concurrently. Salary: competi-
tive with excellent benefits CUCS is committed
to workforce diversity. EEO. No phone calls. Send
resume, cover letter and salary history to: K.W.
Murnion and Associates, Inc. CUCS Executive
Search, 50 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT - Join us in
mobilizing vital resources for the Asian Ameri-
can community. The Asian American Federa-
tion of New York provides public policy and
community service leadership to identify and
meet the critical needs of Asian Americans.
Seeks a Director of Development responsible
for all aspects of fund raising and communica-
tions. Required: five or more years of success-
ful fund raising and management experience;
excellent writing and interpersonal skills.
Knowledge of the Asian American funding
community a plus. Competitive salary and
benefits, EOE. Send cover letter and resume to
Kay Nishiyama, AAFNY, 120 Wall Street, 3rd
floor, NY, NY 10005, kay@aafny.org
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT - The Neigh-
borhood Defender Service, an innovative
Harlem-based public interest law office seeks
Experienced Director of Development (min. 5
yrs. Exp.) to be responsible for fundraising
from foundations, law firms and individuals.
Job entails grant writing, special events plan-
ning and direct mail. Requires strong writing
skills, excellent interpersonal and communica-
tion skills, initiative and the ability to work w/a
small team. E-mail cover letter with salary
requirements and resume to
segarra@ndsny.orgor mail to: Y. Segarra, NDS,
2031 5th Avenue, NY, NY 10035.
DIRECTOR, BEACON PROGRAM - EI Puente, a
21-year-old holistic learning human rights
institution in Brooklyn, is seeking to fill the
position of Director for its Beacon Program at
JHS 50. Responsibilities: Work within the mis-
sion, philosophy and principles of the organi-
zation, insure integrity of program design,
organizational and program goals, and the
JOBADS
realization of expected contractual outcomes.
Responsible for overall planning, design and
program implementation, contract(s) man-
agement and compliance, staff development,
training and supervision, monitor program
budget, maintaining viable working relation-
ship with host school administration and staff;
establishing and maintaining strong relation-
ship with parents and community members.
Qualifications: Demonstrated experience and
commitment to youth and community develop-
ment; strong management and supervisory
skills; excellent verbal and written communi-
cation skills; highly organized, self-motivated
and able to handle multiple tasks. BA required,
MA preferred. Spanish necessary. Send
resume/cover letter to: Frances Lucerna, Exec-
utive Director, EI Puente, 211 South 4th Street,
Brooklyn, NY 11211
DIRECTOR, VOLUNTEER AND WORK CENTER
- The Directorwill provide dynamic leadership
and vision for the newly formed Volunteer and
Work Development Center at GMHC, which
responds to the employment and vocational
needs of vulnerable HIV infected and at risk
New Yorkers. Specific duties include managing
ongoing training, development, and support of
GMHC's comprehensive volunteer corps and
managing staff that provide recruitment, orien-
tation, screening, assessment, training, job
development, placement, and continuing sup-
port, with the goal of providing the agency's
clients with opportunities for professional
growth, self sufficiency and autonomy. Other
areas of responsibility include establishing and
developing networks of employers to provide
internships and jobs for clients, spearheading
the development and implementation of a
social purpose business that provides on-the-
job training, overseeing the human resource
management of volunteers, and acting as
GMHC's representative to outside agencies
regarding workforce development and volun-
teer issues. Proven managerial and superviso-
ry experience in workforce development, includ-
ing vocational counseling, job development
and placement. Prior work experience with HIV
infected or other vulnerable populations neces-
sary. Prior experience developing workforce
development programs and/or job training
social purpose ventures preferred. Knowledge
of performance based contracts, vocational
counseling, human resource/personnel issues,
management techniques, budget planning and
preparations and organizational behavior. Abil-
ity to direct large and complex volunteer opera-
tion. Excellent organizational and planning
skills. Excellent managerial skills, and ability to
motivate staff. Exceptional written and oral
communication skills. Send resume with cover
letter that must include salary requirement to
GMHC, HR Dept., 119 West 24th Street, New
York, NY 10011, or electronically to
jobs@gmhc.org. GMHC values diversity and is
proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE COUNSELOR - HELP
USA is a nationally recognized leader in the
provisions of transitional housing, residential
and social services. Our family units seek a
Domestic Violence Counselor to work with vic-
tims of Domestic Violence and their children.
Will also be responsible for providing educa-
4S
JOB ADS
tional workshops in Domestic Violence as well
as promoting advocacy for clients. Bachelors
Degree (preferably in Social Services) required.
Experience in educational workshops, domes-
tic violence counseling including crisis inter-
vention, client advocacy and individual as well
as group counseling necessary. Candidate
should be computer literate. Bilingual Span-
ishlEnglish preferred. Starting salary mid
$20's. Send resumes to: Ms. Hayley Carrington,
HELP-ROADS, 515 Blake Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
11207 or fax to 718-495-0859. EOE.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR
Manage Employment and Entrepreneurship
Resource Center: Provide guidance and support
to Small Business Development Counselor
including assistance with developing work-
shops and marketing programs. Run weekly Job
Search Clinic: Provide job seekers with one-on-
one career development counseling and techni-
cal assistance. Oversee Commercial Revitaliza-
tion Program: partner with business owners,
City agencies and elected officials to coordinate
sanitation, safety, beautification and business
recruitment and retention initiatives on local
shopping strip; advise local merchants associ -
ations; coordinate research projects including
merchant, shopper and land-use surveys. Man-
age leasing of 14 commercial spaces: conduct
market research to guide tenant recruitment;
develop and implement marketing strategy;
evaluate prospective tenants; negotiate leases.
Collaborate with staff to develop effective pro-
grams that support local job, business and
wealth creation: research City, State, and Feder-
al workforce and small business development
programs and best practices; lead program fea-
sibility studies and business plans. Assist with
quarterly financial literacy program. Assist with
resource development and management:
research funding opportunities; write program
proposals and reports. Serve on Management
Team: assist with organizational strategic plan-
ning and development. Please mail resumes
and cover letter to: Director of Economic Devel-
opment Search, 1224 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn,
NY 11216, email: pacc@prattarea.org or fax:
718-783-3289
ENTITlEMENTS SPECIALIST - The Entitle-
ments Specialist will provide benefits plan-
ning, assistance and advocacy services to par-
ticipants of the CUCS Career Network, a unique
job training and placement program serving
the special needs population. Through individ-
ual and group counseling, the Entitlements
Specialist is responsible for educating pro-
gram participants on the impact of income on
their benefits as they pursue, maintain, or
improve employment and/or explore career
development. Additionally, this individual is
responsible for developing and maintaining
resources, referrals services and contacts rele-
vant to public benefits supports for program
participants. The Entitlements Specialist will
also provide support services, consultation
and training to program staff. Reqs: BA + 2
years direct service experience; BSW + 1 year
relevant experience (excluding fieldwork) ; or
HS Diploma + 6 years relevant experience. For
applicants without college degrees, every 30
credits can be substituted for one year of expe-
rience. Qualified individuals must possess a
46
strong knowledge of entitlements resources
and systems. Experience working with special
needs populations including individuals with
mental illness, substance abuse, survivors of
domestic violence and/or individuals with
HIVIAIDS preferred. Good verbal and written
communication skills and computer literacy
required. Bilingual SpanishlEnglish preferred.
Experience providing vocational services a
plus. Salary: $31,696. Benefits: compo bnfts
incl $65/month in transit checks. Send
resumes and cover letters by 5/20/03 to: David
Clinton, CUCS/Career Network, c/o The Prince
George14 E. 28th Street, New York, NY 10016.
Email : cnhire@cucs.org. CUCS is committed to
workforce diversity. EEO
FIELD COORDINATOR - Sunnyside Communi-
ty Services, a rapidly growing settlement house
in Western Queens, serving more than 10,000
children, teenagers, adults and active frail
seniors annually has an opening for a Field
Coordinator. Must have BA or commensurate
experience as well as excellent communica-
tions skills to monitor and direct staff in
assisting potentially eligible individuals and
families in gaining access to the Federal Food
Stamp Program. Experience with low-income
communities and computer literacy necessary
and familiarity with government programs and
local delivery systems. Bilingual a plus. We
offer flexible hours including evenings and
weekends. Please mail, fax or email resume
with salary history to Executive Director, Sun-
nyside Community Services, 43-31 39 Street,
Long Island City, NY 11104. Fax: 718-784-
7266, email: jzangwill@scsny.org EOE
FIELD COUNSELORS - EsperanzalHope, an
innovative new juvenile justice program, seeks
counselors to provide services to court-
involved youth and their families. A degree in
social work, counseling, or psychology, or back-
ground with extensive work experience
required. Experience with court-involved youth,
community-based organizations desirable.
English-Spanish desirable. More details:
www.vera.org/esperanza. Cover letters and
resumes to Jenny Kronenfeld; Director, Esper-
anzalHope; 90 John St. Suite 701; NY, NY
10038. Fax 212-964-5566 Email :
esperanza.info@esperanza-hope.org. EDE
FISCAL MANAGER - FIT or PIT. Responsibili-
ties: Prepare financial statements, payroll ,
accounts payable, cash disbursements, AIR,
and cash receipts; Bank recs; Adjusting journal
entries; Prepare tax forms; Prepare for audits;
Assist with other office duties as requested.
Minimum three years' full cycle accounting
experience for multi-funded non-profit; Bache-
lors in Accounting; Fund E-Z. Mail or fax resume,
cover letter and salary history to: GIDC, 275 Sev-
enth Avenue, 9th Roor, RE: Fiscal Manager NY,
NY 10001 Fax: 212-366-6162. No Calls
GROUP TEACHER - HELP USA, a nationally
recognized leader in the provision of transition-
al housing, residential and social services is
seeking a Group Teacher. Supervise the plan-
ning and execution of all classroom activities
and provide an enriched educational program
for children ages 2-6. BAIMA in Early Childhood
Education as well as classroom experience in
an ACD program required. NYS evaluated, cer-
tification and/or bilingual skills (English/Span-
ish) a plus. Send resumes to: HELP 1, Early
Childhood Program, Attn: Brandy Brooks, 515
Blake Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11207, or fax 718-
485-5916 or email blbrooks@helpusa.org.
HEALTH PROMOTION COORDINATOR - Not-
for-profit primary healthcare organization
seeks a Health Promotion Coordinator for its
Bronx sites to develop and implement health
education programs to increase community
awareness of the importance of nutrition and
exercise to reduce the risk of diabetes. Activi-
ties include patient education and counseling,
staff training and promoting the diabetes col-
laborative model. Bachelors in health educa-
tion, nursing or related field required. Masters
preferred. Experience developing and imple-
menting health promotion programs for low-
income, ethnically diverse population, espe-
cially in diabetes, nutrition and exercise
required. Bilingual Spanish preferred. Send
resume with cover letter stating minimum
salary required to: Shoumya Roy Choudhury,
Institute for Urban Family Health, 16 East 16th
Street, New York, NY 10003. Fax: 212-989-
6170, Email: hresource@institute2000.org
HOUSING AIDE - The Forest Hill s Community
House now has a Housing Aide position avail-
able in the Organizing/Housing and Homeless-
ness prevention Program. The position would
entail both clerical and social work aspects.
Responsibilities: Follow-up with families,
Intake, Case Management, Mail ings, Maintain
program records and assist with report prepa-
ration. Requirements: Type 50 wpm, basic
computer skills (word processing/database).
Knowledge of entitlements and/or housing,
good organizational/communication skills.
Must be bilingual (English/Spanish). Excellent
benefits. EEO. Send resumes to: Forest Hills
Community House, 108-25 62nd Drive, Forest
Hills, NY 11375, Attn: Housing Dept.
HOUSING COORDINATORS --large multi-ser-
vice agency has a Housing Coordinator posi-
tion available in our Senior Housing Dept.
Responsibilities include: supervise of social
services, office and maintenance staff. Reqs.
BA and 3-5 years of supervisory expo MA pre-
ferred. Position prefers knowledge of HUD regs
and is FT with benefits. Fax resume indicating
position of interest to 718-722-6134. EDEIM
HOUSING SPECIALIST - Provide housing
placement assistance to persons
infected/affected by HIVIAIDS. Housing Spe-
cialist will primarily be responsible for
hospital outreach, intake/assessment. Con-
duct follow-up activities with clients,
appropriate real estate agencies; landlords
and HRA caseworkers to expedite and ensure
clients' placement into appropriate housing.
Conduct pre/post-placement home visits and
co-facilitate client educational workshops.
Make appropriate referrals where necessary
to develop and enhance client independent liv-
ing skills. Advocate for clients when neces-
sary. Bilingual in English/Spanish, French
and/or Haitian Creole a plus. Good writing
skills req'd. Salary commensurate w/experi-
ence. Fax/Email resume to: Heather Anderson-
Director of Operations, Haitian Women's
Program, 464-466 Bergen Street, Brooklyn,
NY 11217. Fax 718-399-0360/Email :
haittianwomensprogram@erols.com. No
phone calls please
HOUSING SPECIALIST - Westchester leading
non-profit agency has an opening for an expe-
rienced person to provide housing counseling
assistance to families in shelters and tempo-
rary housing environment. Ideal candidate will
be familiar with Section 8 certification and
able to interface with landlords and other out-
side agencies. Must have good com puter/writ-
ten/verbal/interpersonal skills. BS with 3
years experience, own car and valid NYS
license required. Send letter/resume to Direc-
tor HR, Westhab, 85 Executive Blvd., Elmford,
NY 10523. Fax 914-345-3139 EOE
INDEPENDENT LIVING CASE MANAGER -
Seeking creative and committed Masters level
professional (MSW, psych, counseling), with
expo in mental health, HIV, substance abuse for
social service team in permanent supportive
housing in No Manhattan. Resp: caseload,
group work, collaborative service planning
with tenants. Must have: graduate degree; expo
with special needs populations; patience;
energy; excellent listening, communication,
writing, computer skills. Bi-lingual a +. Good
salary/benefits. Fax cover letter/resume to:
212-781-2545. EOE
INSTITUTI ONAL GIVING SPECIALIST - Job
Description: Coordinates government grant
submissions. Assist with corporate and foun-
dation proposals and reports. Work closely with
senior agency management, designated pro-
gram staff, and the Director of Institutional
Giving to assess, complete, and track govern-
ment grant applications. Produce foundation
proposals and reports as needed. Guide pro-
gram staff in the preparation of various docu-
ments, and conduct donor research. Perform
other Development Department functions as
needed. Job Requirements: Bachelor's Degree.
One (1) year of fund-raising experience,
including experience in the preparation of gov-
ernment grants. Excellent writing and
communication skills required. Knowledge of
Raiser's Edge Software a plus. Submit resume
and cover letter to: Community Service Society
of New York Human Resources Department
DV-I0 105 East 22nd Street, New York,
NY 10010 Fax 212-614-5336 or e-mail
cssemployment@cssny.org EOE
INVESTIGATOR - The Bronx Defenders seeks
field investigators to work collaboratively with
teams of lawyers, social workers and support
staff in providing high quality criminal defense
representation to indigent clients. The Bronx
Defenders is an innovative and energetic non-
profit criminal defense organization commit-
ted to the holistic representation of clients,
which includes working with clients, their fam-
ilies and the larger Bronx community. Investi -
gators locate and ta ke statements from wit-
nesses' take photographs, create diagrams
and demonstrative evidence fortrials, and tes-
tify in court when necessary. The majority of an
investigator's work involves speaking with
Bronx residents within the communities them-
CITY LIMITS
selves; candidates should therefore be able to
communicate effectively and adapt quickly to
new situations. Candidates should also be
able to produce high quality written work, and
have an interest in and commitment to social
and criminal justice issues. Spanish speaking
ability desirable. $30,000 for entry level. Excel-
lent benefits. Please send cover letter and
resume to Jan Padios, Investigator, The Bronx
Defenders, 860 Courtlandt Ave., Bronx, NY
10451 or fax 718-665-0100.
JOB DEVELOPER - Innovative non-profit
housing program serving people with psychi-
atric disabilities is seeking a Job Developer
works with ACT program located in Brooklyn.
Responsibilities include developing employer
network, individual placement and support
and Career Club development, some travel in
NY. Vocational background and experience in
employment services necessary. Fax HR 212-
289-0839. No Calls.
JOB DEVELOPER - The Citizens Advice
Bureau (CAB) is a large, multi-service non-
profit serving the Bronx for more than 30 years.
The agency provides a broad range of individ-
ual and family services, including walk-in
assistance and counseling, services to spe-
cial- need populations, such as immigrants,
children, adolescents, seniors, homeless fam-
ilies and singles, individuals and families
affected by HIVIAIDS. CAB provides excellent
benefits and offers opportunities for advance-
ment. Resumes and cover letters indicating
position may be mailed to 2054 Morris Ave.
Bronx, NY 10453, or faxed as directed. Bronx
Works seeks a Job Developer to establish a net-
work of employers to provide employment
opportunities to low-income Bronx residents,
including limited Engl ish speakers. The devel-
oper would identify jobs that match the educa-
tion and skill level of the clients, interview &
pre-screen clients for appropriate jobs and
make referrals to employers. The position
requires a Bachelors degree, excellent commu-
nication & organization skills and the ability to
interface with employers professionally and
interact with clients effectively. Fax credentials
to S. Farimani at 718-993-8089 or e-mail at
sfarimani@cabny.org.
JOB DEVELOPER! JOB READINESS TRAINER -
Innovative Brooklyn CDC seeks job developer
and job readiness trainer for neighborhood
employment services program. Responsibili-
ties: assist program participants in developing
career goals, job search strategies, resumes
and interviewing skills; develop jobs for pro-
gram participants; conduct job readiness work-
shops; oversee participant database. Qualifi-
cations: job development experience; workshop
facilitation experience; well-organized, moti-
vated with excellent communication skills;
computer literate; bilingual (English/Spanish)
a major plus. At least two evenings per week
required. Send cover letter, resume and salary
requirements to Julio Perez, Fifth Avenue Com-
mittee, 141 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11217 or
fax 718-857 -4322 or e-mail
jperez@fifthave.org. www.fifthave.org AAlEOE
JR. ACCOUNTANT - The Citizens Advice
Bureau (CAB) is a large, multi-service non-
profit serving the Bronx for more than 31 years.
The agency provides a broad range of individ-
ual and family services, including walk-in
assistance and counseling, services to spe-
cial-need populations, such as immigrants,
children, adolescents, seniors, homeless fam-
ilies and singles, individuals and families
affected by HIVIAIDS. CAB provides excellent
benefits and offers opportunities for advance-
ment. Resumes and cover letters indicating
position may be mailed to 2054 Morris Ave.
Bronx, NY 10453, or faxed as directed. The Fis-
cal Office seeks a Jr. Accountant. Responsibil-
ities include heavy volume of accounts
payable, up keeping and filing of vendor
invoices, the ability to work under pressure,
and good verbal and written skills. The posi -
tion requires a BS/BA degree in accounting.
Fax credentials to T. Samuel at 718-590-4771
or e-mail it to tsamuel@cabny.org. CAB is an
equal opportunity /affirmative action employer.
LITERACY TEACHER - A Non-Profit Organiza-
tion seeking to fulfill a Literacy teaching posi-
tion. An experienced teacher is needed to teach
youths who have been through the
Juvenile/Criminal Systems. The Literacy
Teacher would be responsible for teaching
basic Reading, Math, and Writing Skills. The
schedule is Monday through Friday and the
hours are 9:00am to 1:00pm. Send cover let-
ter/resume via fax: 212-760-0766
MRDD CASE MANAGER - Bilingual
English/Chinese Case Manager to provide ser-
vices to individuals/families with Developmen-
tally Disabled children. Responsibilities include
case management, counseling, advocacy and
crisis intervention. BA or BSW plus 1-2yrs. exp
with MRIDD. Submit your resume and cover let-
ter to: Lower East Side Family Union, Executive
Office, 84 Stanton Street, New York, NY 10002
or fax 212-529-3244 or Email: info@lesfu.org
OFFICE MANAGER, VICE PRESIDENfS OFFICE
- Oversee administrative functions & provide
secretarial support for the Vice Pres. of Adult
and Continuing Education including schedul-
ing, office computing, maintaining confiden-
JOBADS
tial records. Manage office systems, supervise
two full time admin assistants. Associate's
degree required, Bachelor's preferred. 5 yrs
experience in providing administrative sup-
port; supervisory experience preferred. Ability
to lead team efforts with high professional
standards. Strong planning, customer service,
organizational skills, oral & written communi-
cation skills, proficiency with Microsoft Office
required. Salary $34,000 - $42,000 (Research
Foundation). Cover letter and resume by May
22 to Connie Chui , LaGuardia Community Col-
lege, 31-10 Thomson Ave., Long Island City, NY
11101 or Fax: 718-609-2036. An Equal Oppor-
tunity/Affirmative Action/Americans With Dis-
abilities Act Employer.
OPEN SPACE EQUITY CAMPAIGN DIRECTOR
- The New York City Environmental Justice
Alliance, a grassroots network, seeks organiz-
er/director for program to support member
groups' efforts to increase access to open
space by creating parks, cleaning up brown-
fields, establishing/protecting community gar-
dens, etc. 1-3 years of organizing experience;
knowledge of open space and urban ecological
issues, strong writing, research and communi-
cation skills are essential. Spanish a big plus.
People of color, especially those from low-
income areas in the city, are strongly encour-
aged to apply. $40,000-45,000 to start plus
full family medical/dentaVvision. Resumes &
cover letters: openspace@nyceja.org, or fax:
212-239-2838 or mail: Open Space, NYCEJA,
115 W 30 St #709, NY NY 10001.
OPERATIONS MANAGER - Park Slope Neigh-
borhood Family Center, a unique non-profit
community center, seeks an Operations Man-
agerto oversee maintenance and operations of
the Center. The position requires someone with
PROFESSIONALDIRECTORY
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JULY I AUGUST 2003
212.721.9764
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A.DS, ANNUAL REPORTS , BOOK DESIGN, BROCHURES, CATALOGS,
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Applications 501 (c) (3) Federal Tax Exemptions All fonns
of government-assisted housing, including LISC/Enterprise,
Section 202, State Turnkey and NYC Partnership Homes
KOURAKOS & KOURAKOS
Attorneys at Law
Eastchester, N.Y.
Phone: 1914) 3 9 ~ 7 1
47
JOB ADS
hands-on experience administering a small
facility. Responsibilities vary from day-to-day
but include: basic bookkeeping, scheduling
and overseeing part-time staff, performing
basic building maintenance, managing
fundraising events and providing board sup-
port. There is some flexibility in the hours.
Salary is in the high $30,000's. Applicants
must be computer literate with demonstrable
experience handling operations. Application
deadline is May 28th. Please fax cover letter
and resume to 718-768-2119 or mail to 199
14th Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11215
ORGANIZER - Move NY seeks organizer to
educate and engage community leaders and
residents in targeted NYC neighborhoods
regarding the economic and environmental
benefits of the proposed cross-harbor rail
freight tunnel. Must be detail-oriented and
good communicator. Preferred: knowledge of
NY EJ community and politics, labor/communi-
ty organizing, bilingual Spanish. Full time
position, excellent union health, life, dental,
competitive salary DOE. Fax resume to Alice
Meaker at 646-452-5636 or email
alice@MoveNY.org.
OUTREACH COORDINATOR - Responsible for
the overall implementation of a medical bene-
fits assistance program. Supervise 2 staff in
community outreach efforts to enroll HIV+
individuals into medical care. Assist in com-
pleting program policy and procedures. Com-
plete monthly report. Conduct community out-
reach/CBO presentations. Develop and man-
age relationship with collaborating agencies.
BA Community Health/Human Service. Super-
visory experience/ working with
immigrants/knowledge of HIV/AIDSlBilingual
English/Haitian Creole or English/Spanish
a plus. Salary range $30,000
to $35,000. Fax 718-399-0360, Email
info@haitianwomensprogram.org.
OUTREACH SPECIALIST - Sunnyside Com-
munity Services, a rapidly growing settlement
house in Western Queens, serving more than
10,000 children, teenagers, adults and active
frail seniors annually has an opening for an
Outreach Specialist. The preferred candidate
will have two years experience in low-income
communities and the ability to interact with a
wide range of individuals. Computer literacy
and the ability to work evenings and weekends
necessary. Job duties consist of traveling to
various communities in Western Queens to
identify and assist individuals and families in
gaining access to the Federal Food Stamp Pro-
gram. You must be willing to travel and have
the ability to carry laptop computer and mate-
rials weighing approximately 20 Ibs. Bi-lin-
gual a plus. Please mail, fax or email resume
with salary history to Executive Director, Sun-
nyside Community Services, 43-31 39 Street,
Long Island City, NY 1ll04. Fax: 718-784-
7266, email: jzangwill@scsny.org EOE
PARALEGAL - Job Description: Assist in
drafting, managing and processing contracts
with government and private sector funders of
CSS programs. Provide contract compliance
information and technical assistance to orga-
nizations which subcontract with CSS to pro-
48
vide consumer education workshops and indi-
vidual assistance on issues related to man-
aged care. Provide support to Program staff in
the selection of subcontractors, negotiation of
subcontracts and monitoring of contract com-
pliance. Perform other duties as required relat-
ing to the administration of the Department of
the Legal Counsel. Job Requirements: Bache-
lor's Degree and a minimum of two (2) years of
experience in contracUgrant management in
public benefits, health, human services or an
equivalent combination of education and sim-
ilar experience. Highly organized and detail
oriented. A self-starter capable of working
independently and in conjunction with other
staff on a variety of ongoing projects. Excellent
writing and effective oral Communication
skills required. Knowledge of word-processing,
ACCESS and Excel required. Familiarity with
other basic software applications required.
Submit resume and cover letter to: Communi-
ty Service Society of New York, Human
Resources Department LC-05, 105 East
22nd Street, New York, NY lDOlD.
Fax 212-614-5336 or e-mail
cssemployment@cssny.org EOE
PARALEGAL CASEHANDLER - to work jointly
in Lower Manhattan Office (LMNO) and Civil
Appeals & Law Refonm Unit. For LMNO, parale-
gal provides direct client representation in SSI
and Social Security disability cases, including
two large class-action cases. For Appeals Unit,
will also provide information to members of the
Social Security class actions; review adminis-
trative determinations of Social Security regard-
ing class membership; and assist advocates
with questions about class actions. Excellent
advocacy, writing, organizational skills and
demonstrated commitment to community ser-
vice required. Also requires 4-year college
degree or paralegal certificate from accredited
program. Fluency in Spanish is preferred.
Salary: $31,600/year + excellent benefits. Send
cover letter, resume, and short writing sample
to: Helaine Barnett, Attorney-in-Charge, Legal
Aid Society, Civil Division, 199 Water Street, 3rd
Floor, New York, NY 10038. Women, People of
Color, Gays & Lesbians, and People with Dis-
abilities Especially Encouraged to Apply.
PART-TIME PROGRAM AID - The Forest Hills
Community House is seeking a Part-time Pro-
gram Aid. Will assist staff in identifying and
obtaining relevant information necessary for
reporting forms. Maintaining records, data
entry and tracking of program reports.
Requirements: Type 50 wpm, knowledge of
EXCEL, excellent organizational skills, team
player, must work well under pressure.
Hours/salary: 21 hrs/$12.00 per hour. Send
resume to: FHCH, 108-25 62nd Drive, Forest
Hills, NY 11375. Attn: Housing. EOE.
PER DIEM SOCIAL WORK SUPERVISOR
(OVERNIGHT AND WEEKEND) - Center for
Urban Community Services, a national leader
in the development of effective housing and
service initiatives for homeless people, seeks a
Per Diem Social Work Supervisor (Overnight
and Weekend) for its 350 Lafayette Transition-
al Program. A nationally recognized model for
helping mentally ill homeless people acquire
housing, the program services include: transi-
tional housing for 40 women, comprehensive
case management, group treatment, on- site
psychiatric and medical services, and housing
placement. Responsibilities: Supervise
overnight and weekend case management
staff, provide clinical services to individuals,
crisis intervention, oversee group treatment
activities, and participate in quality assur-
ance. Requirements: CSw. Two years relevant
post-masters direct service experience with
the population served by the program. Good
communication skills and computer literacy
preferred. Salary: $22.04/hour; double-time
pay for holiday coverage. Send resumes and
cover letters by 5/5/03 to: Troy Boyle,
CUCS/350 Lafayette TLC, 350 Lafayette St.,
New York, NY 10012, Email: tlchire@cucs.org.
CUCS is committed to workforce diversity. EEO
PRESS SECRETARY/SPEECHWRITER - Rep.
Jerrold Nadler, a Progressive Democrat whose
Congressional District stretches from Nathan's
to Zabar's in New York City, seeks a Press Sec-
retaryiSpeech Writer for his Washington, DC
office. Excellent writing, verbal communication
and creative thinking to generate press cover-
age required. Candidates must have media
experience, knowledge of politics and be pre-
pared to work in a fast paced environment.
Please send a cover letter, resume and a writ-
ing sample to Brett Heimov, c/o Rep. Jerrold
Nadler, 2334 Rayburn, Washington, D.C.
20515, Attn: Press Secretary/ Speech Writer
position, via fax to 202-225-6923 or via e-mail
to ny08jobs@yahoo.com.
PROGRAM ASSOCIATE - NEDAP seeks a pro-
gram associate to coordinate several financial
justice initiatives. Responsibilities: outreach to
NYC community groups, preparation of educa-
tional materials and management of a HUD-
funded fair housing project. Qualifications:
demonstrated commitment to social justice, 3
years' experience working on community eco-
nomic justice or related issues, proven ability
to work independently and take initiative,
excellent communication skills, and bilingual
ability. Pay commensurate with experience.
Excellent benefits. Submit resume and cover
letter to: Anna Kalthoff, NEDAP, 73 Spring
Street, Suite 506, New York, NY 10012/ Fax:
212-680-5104. Please, no e-mail attach-
ments. For more information, visit
www.nedap.org. Women and people of color
strongly encouraged to apply.
PROGRAM ASSOCIATE - NFP law firm seeks
individual with strong organizational/people
skills. Responsibilities include outreach,
intake, editing newsletter and database man-
agement. Full job description @www.nylpi.org.
Send cover letter, resume, 3 references and
writing sample by 4/25/03 to NYLPI, 151 West
30th Street, 11th floor, NYC, 10001. Attn: M.
Berk.
PROGRAM COORDINATOR (Pro Bono and Pub-
lic Service Programs) - Columbia Law
School seeks individual whose primary respon-
sibility will be to administer and assist in the
development of the Center for Public Interest
Law's Pro Bono Program, it's annual Public
Interest Honors Dinner, the Public Service On-
Campus Interview Program and other career
related programming. Working with the Direc-
tor of the Center for Public Interest Law, the
incumbent will implement the Law School 's
mandatory pro bono program, which consists
of counseling students, meeting with employ-
ers and attorneys, supervising the directors of
Columbia Law School In-House Projects and
evaluating the program. The incumbent will
also plan and produce panels, lectures and
other activities on public interest career topics
and work with the Director to further develop
and supervise the administration of the Public
Service On-Campus Interview Program. The
students, the Law School community and out-
side organizations that seek information about
the Pro Bono Program, the Public Service On
Campus Interview Program, the Dinner and
other related events. BA or the equivalent
required. Experience in public interest or
human rights advocacy preferred. Three years
of related experience, or the equivalent combi-
nation of education and experience, preferably
as a counselor, program or pro bono coordina-
tor is required. Demonstrated interest and
participation in public interest issues and
activities necessary. Must have excellent oral
and written communication skills, as well as
strong interpersonal , administrative and orga-
nization skills required. Excellent computer
skills required (Intemet, desk top publishing
programs, word processing and computer
database management.) Ability to initiate and
follow-through with minimal supervision as
well as work under pressure, adapt to chang-
ing priorities and balance competing assign-
ments necessary. Evening and weekend work
is required. Please send resume and cover let-
terto: Director of Human Resources, Columbia
Law School, 436 West 116th Street, New York,
NY 10027, Fax: 212-854-7946. Columbia
University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative
Action Employer.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR - The Citizens Advice
Bureau (CAB) is a large, multi-service non-
profit serving the Bronx for more than 30 years.
The agency provides a broad range of individ-
ual and family services, including walk-in
assistance and counseling, services to spe-
cial-need populations, such as immigrants,
children, adolescents, seniors, homeless fam-
ilies and singles, individuals and families
affected by HIVIAIDS. CAB provides excellent
benefits and offers opportunities for advance-
ment. Resumes and cover letters indicating
position may be mailed to 2054 Morris Ave.
Bronx, NY 10453, or faxed as directed. CAB
seeks a Program Director. The position
requires an MSWIMPNMPH with 2 years super-
visory experience. Knowledge of contract man-
agement and HIV/AIDS is essential. Salary is
competitive. Responsibilities include man-
agement of 4 contracts with 12+ staff. Candi-
dates should fax resume to K. Iqbal @ 718-
293-9767 or e-mail to kiqbal@cabny.org. CAB
is an equal opportunity/affirmative action
employer.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR - New Destiny Housing
Corporation, a citywide nonprofit housing
group providing housing and services to
domestic violence survivors, is seeking a
Director for its HousingLink Program. Director
will implement a training program for advo-
CITY LIMITS
cates and shelter residents on permanent
housing options and subsides; identify and
clarify housing policies and procedures by
building relationships within key agencies;
provide technical assistance to domestic vio-
lence survivors and advocates; provide staff
support for the housing agenda of a coalition
of residential service providers; maintain web-
site providing housing resource information.
Qualifications: Masters Degree preferred,
knowledge of Section 8 and NYCHA housing
required, ability to negotiate bureaucracies,
strong advocacy skills, excellent writing and
speaking skills, high level of motivation. Posi-
tion available in May 2003. Competitive salary
commensurate with experience, excellent ben-
efits. Email cover letter and resume to
jstein@newdestinyhousing.org or fax to 646-
472-0266.
commitment to the families served by the child
welfare and family court systems. Applicants
must also have strong communication skills,
experience with recruitment and supervision of
staff and/or volunteers, a keen interest in
organizational development, and a desire to
share in both the exhilaration and challenges
of a new and growing endeavor. Salary is com-
mensurate with experience; excellent benefits
package. CFR is an equal opportunity employ-
er. Applicants should send or email a cover let-
ter, resume, writing sample and three refer-
ences (including phone and email contacts)
before June 6, 2003 to Selina Robinson, Execu-
tive Assistant, to the above address, or to
srobinson@cfrny.org. No phone inquiries
please.
PROGRAM INTAKE COORDINATOR - NMIC
seeks experienced professional to coordinate
PROGRAM DIRECTOR - NMIC seeks profes- client intake, evaluation, and placement in our
sional to run ESOL and adult education pto---- ESOL and adult education program. Duties:
gram. Duties: supervising instructors, staff
and program operations; overseeing program
budgeting and financial planning, maintain-
ing program financial records; managing
intake and recruitment; coordinating services
with other departments; collecting and analyz-
ing program data; ensuring contract compli-
ance and achievement of program goal;
researching funding opportunities; and grant
writing. Requirements: Bilingual , flexible
schedule, excellent written and oral communi-
cation skills, supervisory and administrative
experience in ESOL and adult education, and
proven team-building abilities. To apply please
contact and indicate which the position to
Andrea Vaghy: 212-453-5369, fax 212- 928-
4180, andreavaghy@nmic.org
PROGRAM DIRECTOR FOR PARALEGAl AND
DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT - The Center for
Family Representation (CFR), a new law and
policy organization, seeks an innovative and
energetic individual to fill an immediate open-
ing for the position of Program Director for
Paralegal and Development Support. CFR's
mission is to enhance the effectiveness of the
child welfare system by promoting parent
engagement and to enhance the effectiveness
of Family Court by strengthening and support-
ing legal representation for parents in child
protective, permanency and termination pro-
ceedi ngs. This unique staff member will be
responsible for developing a Paralegal Assis-
tance Program for assigned counsel members
in all five boroughs, including providing direct
paralegal support, and will recruit and super-
vise additional paralegal staff and interns.
This staff member will also develop systems
for data collection and evaluation of CFR's
paralegal assistance program, and shepherd
the integration of paralegals into CFR's direct
representation teams. Last, this staff member
will work closely with CFR's Executive and
Deputy Directors on development efforts aimed
at expanding CFR's online legal and practice
resources, including a CFR website and other
development efforts to promote the growth of
CFR. The position requires at a minimum a
Bachelor's Degree in a related field, and past
experience in legal settings and/or with fund
raising is additionally required. Individuals
who apply should be able to demonstrate a
JULY/AUGUST 2003
managing ESOL and adult education class
schedule; providing support to teachers; pro-
viding counselors/outreach for students; work-
ing with clients to develop educational and
career plans, ensuring students comply with
program standards and are engaged in educa-
tional activities; entering client data/atten-
dance in database; monitoring student
progress; and tracking each contract's require-
ments to ensure milestones are met. Require-
ments: Bilingual, flexible schedule, excellent
written and oral communication skills, experi-
ence in ESOL and adult education, and proven
team-building abilities. To appiy,-please con-
tact and indicate the position you're applying
to: Andrea Vaghy fax: 212-928-4180, email
andreavaghy@nmic.org
PROGRAM MANAGER - The National Urban
League seeks a Program Manager to adminis-
ter the National Urban League Scholarship
Program for the Education and Youth Develop-
ment Policy, Research and Advocacy Depart-
ment. The successful candidate will have the
administrative, operative, and programmatic
responsibility of managing-and expanding the
$10 million scholarship program that current-
ly encompasses six diverse scholarships and a
national database of students. The Manag-
er/Associate will work to strengthen the brand
position of the scholarship program, while
simultaneously identifying new resources to
provide scholarship resources to even more
students of color (graduating high school
seniors, undergraduates, and graduates).
He/she will also maintain and cultivate bene-
ficial relationships with other educational
partners working to provide access and
resources to the targeted population. The ideal
candidate will develop comprehensive reports
for the funding source inclusive of analysis
and impact. The highly organized candidate
will exercise creativity and innovation to pro-
duce various promotional materials and/or
resources for the marketing and support of the
program. He/she will work as part of a team of
talented professionals to assess and evaluate
the success of the scholarship program and to
improve service delivery to the students, affili-
ate network and other constituents. BA in busi-
ness; Master's preferred. Excellent organiza-
tion, written and oral communications skills
for report writing, proposal development, and
presentations. Graphic/design experience pre-
ferred; Web design and development knowl-
edge a plus. Fund development/marketing
background a plus. Ability to travel (25%-
40%). To apply submit resume to
recruitment@nul.org or fax to 212-558-5497.
Please mention you were referred by City lim-
its. No Phone Calls.
PROPERTY MANAGER - Great opportunity
avail. with progressive non-profit community
org. in Bushwick, Brooklyn. One year assign-
ment - resp. incl. rent collection, DHCR com-
pliance. Indiv. must be organized and Spanish
a plus. Sal. based on experience. Send resume
to 718-366-8740 attn: Donald Manning
PROPERTY MANAGERS - Large multi-service
agency has a Property Manager position avail-
able in our Senior Housing Dept. Responsibil-
ities include: annual and interim recerts, rent
collection and rental of vacant units. Reqs: HS
Diploma must be computer literate and have
excellent communication skills. BA and
accounting experience preferred. Position
prefers knowledge of HUD regs and is FT with
benefits. Fax resume indicating position of
interest to 718-722-6134. EOEiM
REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATE - Real Estate
DeveloperlBuilder headquartered in Trenton, NJ
seeking Associate to assist in Acquisition and
Development site throughout New York and
New Jersey. Must be a self-starter with com-
puter skills. Send resume and salary require-
ments. Fax 718-983-7078.
REAl ESTATE DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR -
BronxlWestchester based non-profit seeks
experienced senior real estate professional.
Must have 5 plus years experience in afford-
able housing development and management.
Familiarity with multiple and private sources.
Knowledge about construction and commercial
real estate marketing a plus. Comp $75 -
$100. Send resume cover letter and salary his-
tory to VALELKIND@AOL.COM.
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE - Skills: Masters in
Public Policy, Economics, Urban Planning or
Policy Analysis, Excellent communication and
analytic skills, Experience collecting, analyz-
ing, and organizing data and producing
reports, Use of SPSS, MAP Info, Excel , Explain-
ing data and statistics in non-technical terms.
The Successful Candidate Will Have the Ability
to: Seek out and use supervision, Maintain
workplan and timeline, Make a two-three year
commitment to complete the next edition of
Keeping Track, Use complicated data sets to
tell a clear and simple story about child well-
being in New York City nei ghborhoods (Collect,
manipulate and analyze data), Work with large
data sets. Tasks: Produce reports and Keeping
Track databook, Update and maintain data-
base and data tracking template. Interested
candidates please send cover letter and
resume to: Jennifer March-July, Citizens' Com-
mittee for Children of New York, 105 East 22nd
Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10010,
jmarch@kfny.org. Citizens' Committee for
Children is an equal opportunity employer and
does not discriminate on the basis of race,
JOBADS
color, national or ethnic origin, gender, sexual
orientation or disabling condition. Salary and
benefits are commensurate with experience.
SENIOR MEDIA RELATIONS ASSOCIATE -
Report to Director of Media Relations; develop
and implement proactive media strategy
around ACLU issues; production of press mate-
rials; CUltivate relationships with high-profile
journalists. College degree; 6 years experience
in planning media campaigns and promoting
legal issues; contacts at major newspapers
and magazines; minimal travel required. Reply
to: Communications DepartmentlEW, ACLU,
125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY
10004.
SENIOR PROGRAM EVALUATION ASSoCIATE -
Bailey House is a nationally recognized leader
providing innovative housing and support ser-
vices for formerly homeless people living with
AIDS - Description: Provide technical assis-
tance in program evaluation to community-
based HIV/AIOS housing and service providers
in NYC. Assist organizations in defining mea-
surable program outcomes, implementing and
refining quantitative and qualitative outcomes
data collection and management systems,
producing reports and identifying and
responding to the impact of outcomes evalua-
tion on program and agency infrastructure.
Contribute to the development, analysis and
reporting of aggregate outcomes across par-
ticipating programs and categories. Provide
other technical assistance or appropriate
referrals as needed. Participate in developing
model outcome systems that can be adopted
by other AIDS housing and service providers.
Requirements: Master's Degree in Publ ic
Health, Public Administration or other related
field plus two years in the service field. Experi-
ence in quantitative/qualitative analysis,
strong analytic and writing skills, excellent
communication, and presentation and project
management skills. Experience developing
resource materials. Ability to multi-task and
work in a highly collaborative setting and meet
individual program responsibilities. Computer
literate including but not limited to SPSS
(preferred). We offer competitive salaries along
with a comprehensive benefits package that
includes medical/dental insurance,
life/disability insurance, pension plan
and five weeks vacation. EOE. To
apply send your resume/cover
hr@baileyhouse.org, by Fax: 212-414-1431.
SERVICE COORDINATOR - The Forest Hills
Community House is seeking a Service Coordi-
nator to work with clients who were affected by
9/11 to obtain available resources. Coordina-
tor will collaborate with clients on solving
immediate problems and developing a long-
term recovery plan. Goals may include employ-
ment, mental health treatment, housing and
financial assistance. Requirements: BSWand
one-year case management experience. Must
have excellent verbal and written communica-
tion skills. Knowledge of entitlements and
support programs. Must be bilingual in Span-
ish/English. Responsibilities: Engage with
clients through telephone contact and face-to-
face meetings. Educate clients of entitlement
programs. Provide counseling, advocacy and
49
JOB ADS
so
LLUSTRATED MEMOS
.f'

Governor PatakPs recent
budget-balancing proposal to
install video lottery machines
around tbe city was not
ambitious enough.
NEW YORK STATE INSTANT MESSAGING LOTTO
REVENUE ENHANCEMENT PLAN NO. 1800/MTAXED
We have the technology,
why don't we put a wireless
gaming device in the hands
of every New Yorker with a
dollar and a dream?
GOT AN IMPRACTICAL SOLUTION
TO AN INTRACTABLE PROBLEM?
SEND IN
OFFICE OF THf. CITY VISIONA.RY
CITY LlMITS MAGAZlNE
12.0 WALL ST., 20
TH
FLOOR, NY NY 10005
ooicv@ citylirnlts.org
CITY LIMITS
support. Make referrals to multi-services.
Maintain clear and current case records.
Hours: 35 hours. Salary: $34,000. Send
resume to: FHCH, 108-25 62nd Drive, Forest
Hills, NY 11375. Attn: Housing. EOE.
SOCIAL WORKER - Part-time Social Worker
to develop and implement a new well ness
program for survivors of women's cancers,
including program planning, outreach,
developing relationships, providing referrals
and conducting groups. Women will be
empowered to take an active role in their
health care, including specialized fitness
programs. Qualifications: experience in well-
ness, MSW/ CSW preferred.
Weekend, evening hours required. Resume
and salary requirements to AED, YWCA of
Brooklyn 30 Third Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
11217. Fax 718-858-5731. Email
ywcabrooklyn@lycos.com. No phone calls
please.
SOCIAL WORKER (MSW) - Mental Health
agency located in Harlem seeks MSW for scat-
tered-site AIDS housing program. Successful
candidate will supervise casework staff, coor-
dinate intake and provide direct clinical ser-
vices. MSW and one year related experience.
CASAC eligible and bilingual a plus. Computer
literate and good writing skills. Excellent
growth potential. Recent grads welcome, will
train. $38K with great benefits. Fax resume:
212-316-9618 or hr@westonunited.org.
STAFF ATTORNEY - The Legal Aid Society, Vol-
unteer Division seeks Staff Attorney for Housing
Dev Unit. Works w/tenant associations, individ-
ual tenants & community-based organizations.
Harlem & Upper Manhattan. Must be dedicated
to public in law. Resume & cover letter to
Andrew Lehrer, Esq., The Legal Aid society, 230
E. 106th St, NYC 10029. Fax 212-876-5365
Email: aelehrer@legal-aid.org. Women, people
of color, gays and lesbians & people with dis-
abilities are especially encouraged to apply.
SUPERVISOR - Horticulture/Community
Restitution Crew Supervisor, Temporary
(Spring/Summer2003), Midtown Community
Court. Required: Driver'S License, H.S. diploma,
and experience in supervising, general mainte-
nance and painting. Responsibilities include:
supervise court defendants completing their
community service by doing gardening and
painting projects or by cleaning and maintain-
ing court building; work with defendants to
engage them in services at court; and develop
and document work projects in the Midtown
neighborhood. See www.courtinnovation.org.
Email resume to avargas@courts.state.ny.usor
fax resume to 212-586-1144.
TEACHER'S AIDE (pm - HELP USA, a nation-
ally recognized leader in the provision of tran-
sitional housing, residential and social ser-
vices is seeking a Teacher's Aide (pm. Assist
the teachers to provide an enriched education
program for children ages 2-6. High school
diploma required, some college credits are pre-
ferred. Early childhood experience and/or bilin-
gual a plus. Send resumes to: HELP I, Early
Childhood Program, Attn: Brandy Brooks, 515
Blake Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11207,
or fax 718-485-5916 or email
blbrooks@helpusa.org.
TEAM LEADER - CASES, New York's largest
alternatives to incarceration agency, is look-
ing for a Team Leader for its new Assertive
Community Treatment team for mentally ill
felony offenders. The ACT team will serve up
to 68 offenders by providing them with men-
tal health services and opportunities for rein-
tegration into the community. The team
leader will lead the team, provide direct ser-
vices to participant and be responsible for
ensuring that the team operates in compli-
ance with New York State Office of Mental
Health regulations. CSW or masters level
training in social work, psychology or related
field; supervisory experience and knowledge
of working in the criminal justice system and
working with homeless individuals with psy-
chiatric disabilities and co-occurring sub-
stance addictions; and strong written and
oral communication skills, computer literacy.
Submit resume and cover letter to Director of
Personnel , CASES, 346 Broadway, 3rd Floor,
New York, NY 10013, fax: 212-553- 6379.
www.cases.org.
VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT & COMMU-
NICATIONS - The Mount Hope Housing
Company, Inc, a non-profit CDC in the Bronx,
seeks a Vice President of Development and
Communications. S/He will work closely with
the President/CEO and the Vice Presidents of
each department (Le. Youth Services,
Employment Services, Community Develop-
ment and Relations). The position requires
management as well as execution. Responsi-
bilities include: securing corporate, founda-
tion and government support by renewing
current funding commitments, identifying
new prospects, developing relationships with
program officers, and pursing those
prospects with written grant applications,
oversight of the planning and execution of
special fund raising events by supervising
and supporting consultants, staff, and vol -
unteers involved in carrying out the special
events, coordination of the centralization of
the organization's external communications
(e.g. newsletters, annual report, brochures,
website etc.), and management of capital
campaign for the Mount Hope Center project
and associated conSUltants. Qualifications:
Proven ability to multi-task in a fast paced
environment. Excellent written, editorial and
verbal communication skills along with a
working knowledge of MS Office are essen-
tial. 3-5 years of experience in development
and communications required, proven
strength in media strategy development and
experience managing the creative process
from conception to execution. Have an exist-
ing relationship with foundation officers that
support NYC not-for-profit organizations.
LET US DO A FREE EVALUATION
OF YOUR INSURANCE NEEDS
JOBADS
Proficient in Word, Excel and PowerPoint;
Quark experience a plus. Bachelor's degree in
related field required. Salary low to mid
$60's. Fax or mail cover letter and resume to
Keith Fairey, Development VP Search Com-
mittee at 718-299-5623 or Mount Hope
Housing Company, Inc. 2003-05 Walton
Avenue, Bronx, NY 10453
VICE-PRESIDENT - Community Development
Corporation is seeking a Vice President with
excellent managerial skills, proven fund raising
abilities, foundation contacts, grassroots com-
mitment to community development, ability to
produce in a fast paced environment and
excellent analytical skills. Relevant degree
required along with good communication skills
and proficient computer skills. Please fax
resume to 718-542-7694.
VICE-PRESIDENT, HOUSING - Westhab,
Westchester's leading nonprofit and social ser-
vice agency is recruiting for this senior man-
agement position. Responsible for overall
administration of a division with an 8 million
operating budget and 75 staff. Division oper-
ates transitional and permanent housing; pro-
vides rent subsidies and administer a compre-
hensive program of individual and community
support services. We are looking for a seasoned
senior manager with a background in multi-
family housing. Masters Degree preferred.
Send cover letter/ resume indicating salary
history to Director of Human Resources, West-
hab, 85 Executive Blvd. Elmsford, NY 10523,
Fax 914-345-3139. EOE
VOCATIONAL EVALUATOR/COUNSELOR - Join
comprehensive vocational services unit work-
ing with adults with disabilities. Provide voc.
evaluation and career counseling, collaborate
with VESID. BAIBS plus three years exp in a
vocational setting, MAIMS preferred. Back-
ground working in mental health/chemical
dependency preferred. Send resumes via fax
212-585-6262. EOE
We have been providing low-cost insurance programs and
quality service for HDFCs, TENANTS, COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
and other NONPROFIT organizations for over 15 years .
JULY/AUGUST 2003
We Offer:
SPECIAL BUILDING PACKAGES
FIRE LIABILITY BONDS
DIRECTOR'S & OFFICERS' lIABILTY
GROUP LIFE & HEALTH
''Tailored Payment Plans"
ASHKAR CORPORA TION
146 West 29th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10001
(212) 2798300 FAX 7142161 Ask for : Bolo Ramanathan
51
TOUGH TIMES DEMAND TOUGH DECISIONS.
WE CAN HELP.
We are Community Resource Exchange (CRE), New York City's oldest and largest non-
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Our job is to help your organization stay strong in these tough times so that you can con-
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NEW INITIATIVES OF INTEREST
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NEW YORK, NY 10006
212-894-3394