CitJl Limits

Volume XIX Number 4

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Senior Editor: Jill Kirschenbaum
Associate Editor: Steve Mitra
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Beverly Cheuvront, former City Limits
Editor
Errol Louis, Central Brooklyn Partnership
Mary Martinez, Montefiore Hospital
Rebecca Reich, Housing Consultant
Andrew Reicher, UHAB
Tom Robbins, Journalist
Jay Small , ANHD
Walter Stafford, New York University
Doug Turetsky, former City Limits Editor
Pete Williams, Center for Law and
Social Justice
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2/ APRIL 1994/CITY UMITS
~
I : : : f i J f f ' ~
Re-order the Court
I
magine a judicial system that punishes landlords who have allowed their
buildings to fall into a wretched state of disrepair. Imagine a court where
tenants without heat or hot water or a solid roof can withhold the rent
until their apartment is repaired without fear of eviction.
The word in landlord circles is that New York City has just such a system,
Housing Court, and that it's rigged against property owners. Keep on
dreaming, landlords.
As Senior Editor Jill Kirschenbaum writes in the first installment of a two-
part special report, Housing Court has been a miserable failure in the eyes of
the people who created it 21 years ago. Their intent was to establish a judicial
mechanism for enforcing the housing and maintenance code. They ended up
with an eviction mill that forces tens of thousands of tenants out of their
homes every year.
More than 92 percent of the cases brought before New York's Housing
Court are filed by landlords against tenants for nonpayment of rent. Only 3
percent are filed by tenants seeking basic repairs and tolerable living
conditions. Housing Court was meant to protect tenants; instead, it's become
an enforcement arm of the real estate industry.
How did this come to be? The tale is an important lesson for legislators: the
Civil Court Act 110 of 1972 was strong in its mission statement but vague
when it came to mapping out a system to achieve its goals. As a result, the
underlying infrastructure of Housing Court remains so weak that there are
continuous power struggles over who has the right to appoint and reappoint
judges to the bench; what's more, there is no clear disciplinary procedure for
removing incompetent or feckless judges. And there is no movement for
change among the people in charge.
As next month's article will make clear, this crisis of immobility in
Housing Court has severe implications for our homeless shelter system and
the preservation of low income housing. We hope to stir policymakers into
looking anew at a system that desperately needs reform. If change is not
forthcoming, we all pay the price.
* * *
Thanks to everyone who helped out with our fundraising drive last
month-we raised enough to pay the rent and get this issue in the mail. And
everyone had a good time at the party, too. 0
Cover design by Karen Kane. Photograph by Steven Fish.
,

FEATURES
Power of Peace 10
Safe spaces for denizens of violent streets and prison cells: a project
founded by Quakers is helping pacify the urban soul.
by Alexia Lewnes
Justice Denied 16
Housing Court turns 20: poor oversight, internecine turf wars and an
administration without a vision for reform. Hardly cause to celebrate.
Part one of a two part series . ' by Jill Kirschenbaum
PIPELINE
Still Burning 6
The plight of fIre victims in search of a home reveals deep contradictions
in the city's homeless policies. by Jesse Drucker and Andrew White
Clean Sweep 14
As the stomach turns: residents of industrial neighborhoods are out to
clear the air of a foul garbage stench. by Steve Mitra
COMMENTARY
Myths and Facts
Decoding Welfare Reform
Cityview
Capturing the Debate
Review
Denunciation as Politics
DEPAilTMENTS
Editorial 2
Briefs
Ten .. IB' Nightmare 4
Restoration Guaranteed 5
Broken Step In 5
Letten
22
by Mimi Abramowitz
and Fred Newdom
24
by Eva Neubauer
26
by Richard A. Cloward
and Frances Fox Piven
27
Profeuional
Direetory 30,31
Job AdJCl .. i6eda 31
6
10
16
CITY UMnS/APRIL 1994/3
BRIEFS
Tenants' Nightmare
Agarwal's Ghost Haunts 175th Street
If hell is the impossibility of all
reason, then the tenants of 551
West 175th Street in Washington
Heights are mired in its deepest
domain.
" At any time a catastrophe
could occur in this building, " says
Rafael Hernandez, a
community organizer
with the Northern Man-
hattan Improvement
Corporation (NMIC) .
Hernandez is working
with the tenants in their
effort to stabilize the
property, which for
years has been in and
out of the hands of one
ofthe city's worst slum-
lords, Anil Agarwal, as
well as city ownership,
bankruptcy court and a
few other nightmaresto
boot.
The apartments on
the east side of the
building are sinking
dangerously toward the
center as evidenced by
lopsided door frames and cracks
along the walls. Franklin Peralta's
bedroom floor slants so severely
that he has placed several inches
of wood beneath the legs of his
bed to keep it level. In the base-
ment, a rotten support beam is in
desperate need of replacement.
Agarwal's exploits were re-
counted in City Limitsth ree years
ago (February 1991), when he was
caught removing the building's
boiler to save money. Atthetime,
he was also renting roomsto drug
dealers who were ter-
rorizing the tenants.
And he had taken the
building into bank-
ruptcy court to avoid
paying his debts-
including property
taxes-and to evade in
rem proceedings filed
by the city.
Butthesaga became
even more bizarre after
that. In the fall of 1991,
the bankruptcy court
deemed the property
worthless to Agarwal's
creditors, effectively
dropping it from the
proceeding. Soon after,
the city took ownership,
and with the help ofthe
police, the tenants
managed to clear out the drug
dealers. They also took the first
steps toward joining a coopera-
tive ownership program, the Mu-
tual Housing Trust.
But last year, attorney Harry
Greenbaum (another slumlord
Through a New Yortl CIty Housing Authority IHYCHA) program developed in
collaboration with the Municipal Art Society, 15 young residents of the
Monisania Houses in the South Bronx have learned construction, design and
landscaping skills and were invited to participate in the refurbishing of the
project's outdoor spaces. Caprist McBrown 11eft) and Mehin McClain made final
additions to a blueprint at HyeHA headquarters last month. Wortl will begin
later this year.
4/ APRIL 1994/CITY UMITS
Tenant association member John
Ewers points to water damage in the
lobby of 551 West 175th Street.
profiled in City Limits in 1991)
convinced city lawyers that the
government had no right to the
property. He argued that his client,
Michael Kane, held Agarwal ' s
mortgage and that, because of its
status in bankruptcy court, the
property was rightfully Kane's.
The city agreed-and all the ten-
ants' efforts to take control of the
property went out the window.
Thetenantsand NMICcontend
thatthe city goofed when it turned
the building over to Kane. They
say that once the bankruptcycourt
gave up on the property, the city
had every rightto claim it. Butcity
lawyers failed to check the court
records . "They took [Green-
baum' s) word for it," says Ken
Rosenfeld of NMIC. " They didn't
check. They screwed up. "
Kane promptly sold the build-
ing, and as of October 20, 1993,
the current owner, Peter Papas
owed $191,000 in unpaid property
taxes. He has failed to make
important repairs, and the tenants
are on rent strike.
City lawyers say that unless
the landlord pays off his overdue
taxes, the property will eventu-
ally return to city ownership. The
tenants are doubtful, however,
that the city will take action soon.
"It's been six years since we
first got into this," says Rosenfeld.
"Agarwal is outofthe picture, but
his ghost carries on."
John Santiago
Restoration Guaranteed
Victory for HPD Tenants
A recent ruling in state court
gives thousands of New York
tenants new muscle in
struggles with their reluctant
landlord, the city's Department
of Housing Preservation and
Development (HPD).
The Appellate Division of the
Supreme Court has barred HPD
from vacating decrepit occu-
pied in rem buildings-proper-
ties taken from landlords who
fail to pay their property taxes-
in order to clear them out for
redevelopment projects or to
avoid maintaining them.
The decision, in Lacks v. City
of New York, states that the
city, like any private landlord, is
obligated to maintain its prop-
erties and, in the event that a
vacate order becomes neces-
sary, to restore them to habit-
able conditions.
Tenants of five buildings-
one on Schaefer Street in
Bushwickandfouron St. Nicho-
las Avenue in Harlem-sued
after HPD forced them out of
their homes in 1991, claiming the
buildings were unsafe. The city
took ownership ofthe buildings a
decade ago.
Richard Krulick, a lawyer with
the Ecumenical Community
Development Organization, and
RichardWagnerofBrooklyn Legal
Services Corporation argued the
case, claiming that the city had
evaded its management respon-
sibilities and, in the case of the
Harlem buildings, issued vacate
orders in an attempt to empty
them in preparation for a redevel -
opment scheme.
But the city contended it had
unique rights unlike other land-
lords. Alan Krams, assistant
corporation counsel to the city,
argued that "the concept that a
landlord must repair unsafe con-
ditions for which it bears respon-
sibility has relevance only when
applied to the private sector,"
according to court papers.
The Appellate Division dis-
agreed with Krams, affirming an
earlier ruling that HPD is no differ-

Brokers
Step In
Last month marked the assault
by the Giuliani administration on
the budgets of a number of
programs designed to assist
homeless New Yorkers-the SRO
Loan program, the Division of
AIDS Services and others. Butthe,
cut in the Emergency Assistance
Rehousing Program (EARP), the
city's primary program forfinding
permanent housing for homeless
families, drew the most ambiva-
lent response from advocates.
In their public comments,
many activists have stated strong
opposition to the city's move to
reduce the substantial bonuses
EARP offers landlords in exchange
for providing leases to homeless
families. But privately, there is
tentative acknowledgment that
the bonuses have long been far
too generous-and that perhaps
the cuts are not such a bad thing.
ent from a private landlord and
must properly maintain its build-
ings.
According to the tenants'
attorneys, the decision knocks out
the city's power to terminate
tenancies by simply issuing vacate
orders.
"It's is an enormous weapon
in the hands of lin-rem) tenants,"
says Wagner. "Prior to this they
were afraid to take the city to
courtto do repairs in the building,
because the city might have
vacated them. This ruling says
that threat no longer exists."
Krams refused to comment on
the effects of decision, other than
to say he hopes to take the case to
I
i
I \ \
~
There are other changes in the
program, however, that have
stirred anxiety among some ad-
vocates.
For instance, the Department
of Homeless Services (DHS) will
now allow all landlords to use
commercial brokers to match
families to the apartments. The
broker's fee will be paid out of
emergency welfare grants, and
the cost could amount to more
than $1 million each year, offi-
cials say. In the past, only land-
lords new to the program were
allowed to use broker services.
"If the idea is to save money, I
question the idea of using
brokers," says Elizabeth Darguste
of the Citizens Committee for
Children, which is preparing to
release a long-term study of the
program.
Two employees of nonprofit
organizations funded by the city
to help homeless families find
apartments say they have wit-
nessed abuses by apartment bro-
kers seeking cash payments from
homeless families in exchange
the Court of Appeals-the
highest court in the state.
If the appeal fails, the city
will have to restore the five
buildings and allowthetenants
to return-unless officials can
prove to the court that they
were not responsible for the
dilapidated conditions and that
repair work would be un-
reasonably expensive. Wagner
says he is confident that the
court would not accept such a
claim, because the city has
owned the buildings for more
than a decade and therefore is
clearly responsible for their
deterioration.
Steve Mitra
for apartments. The employees
would not allow their names to be
used, however, for fear of losing
their jobs.
Under the EARP program,
when a landlord rents an apart-
ment to a homeless family he or
she receives a bonus for each
member of the family. Until last
month, the award amounted to
$2,300 for each person. The new
rules set the rate at $1,000, with a
per-apartment maximum of
$5,000. The city and state expect
to save about $18 million by cut-
ting the bonus. Last year, more
than 2,000 families found new
apartments through the program.
Homelessfamilies also receive
a federal Section 8 rent subsidy
when they find housing through
BRIEFS
EARP, and Roger Muney, director
of the program at DHS, says the
federally-guaranteed rent pay-
ments should be sufficient incen-
tive to attract new landlords into
the program.
Darguste points out, however,
that there are many other prob-
lems with EARP that have yet to
be addressed. "Families have
complaints about horrible condi -
tions in EARP apartments, and
landlords have complaints about
not getting paid on time," she
says. Two years ago, City Limits
reported on slumlords winning
large EARP bonuses even as they
battled with city lawyers in
housing court over housing code
violations (June/July 1992).
Andrew White
Tenants kept the pressure on the City Councillat month lIS rent reguI.tIon
.... came up for renewal. On March 21, the council YOIed to extend regu1a-
tions, but with "IIIXIIIY decontrol" provisions that will eventually deregulate
apartments renting for more than $2,000 a month and U- in which tenants
make over $250,000 a year. Before the vote, dozens of tenants queued up at
City Hall awaiting an opportunity to get inside for the Maring. PIctured abcwe
are (I-r) Roz Hoffman, Cannine Prieto, Mary Colon and Jane Wood of the
Chelsea Coaition on Housing.
RESOURCES
Preserving Hope
Building Blocks: Community-
Based Strategies to Counteract
Housing Disinvestment and
Abandonment in New York City,
By Vicki Oppenheim and Luis
Sierra of the Community Service
Society, (212)254-8900. Last year,
the housing policy research group
at CSS published a study that
sounded the alarm about a
growing foreclosure crisis
affecting privately-owned rental
apartment buildings. This follow-
up report looks at howfour neigh-
borhood groups-the Oceanhill -
Brownsville TenantsAssociation,
The Northwest BronxCommunity
and Cleargy Coalition, the United
TIL Coalition of Harlem and the
Ridgewood Bushwick Senior
Citizen Council-are organizing
tenants and using scarce govern-
ment dollars to forestall the total
abandonment of dozens of
buildings in the city's poorest
neighborhoods.
CITY UMITS/ APRIL 1994/5
Still Burning
By Jesse Drucker
and Andrew White
Fire victims take a one-two punch from the makers of the city's homeless policy.
T
he fire that drove Miryam Acosta
and her family out of their
Queens Village home last Sep-
tember was bad enough. But the
Colombian immigrant says the worst
experience of her life didn't come until
later, when she and her extended family
moved into a New York City homeless
shelter, with its crowded rooms and
near-total lack of privacy.
When the Acostas-six adults and
four children in all-stepped across the
line into homeless ness , they didn't know
what they were in for. The city is trying
to find them a new place to live, as they
do all families and individuals who are
severely deteriorated buildings are also
eligible for relocation services. The
number of emergency vacate orders
issued by city inspectors has more than
doubled this year, according to the
Department of Housing Preservation and
Development (HPD), confirming recent
research indicating that the city' s
privately-owned affordable housing
stock is in the throes of severe decline.
The relocation program is hardly
ready to cope with this emerging crisis.
Data from HPD-the agency responsible
for the program-reveal that in 1993 the
city placed only 627 burned-out or
vacated households in new homes, or
Families made homeless by fire may not fit everyone'. conception of "the homeIess," yet they often find it
harder to locate a _ place to live than other homeless New yortlen. Sonia Cardoiia (aboYe, with five of
her children and a neilhborl has lived in a rat-infested shelter for half a year.
burned out of their homes and seek
government help. But lately, the refer-
ral and relocation system designed to
do the job has had a hard time locating
apartments for its clients. The problem,
advocates and city employees say, is
rooted in recent housing and home-
lessness policies that effectively dis-
criminate against families in emergency
situations.
Fire victims are not the only people
eligible for the emergency rehousing
program. Scores of households forced
out of their apartments each year by city
inspectors placing vacate orders on
a/APRIL 1994/CITY UMITS
42 percent of the families who sought
the government' s help that year. By con-
trast, in 1990, the city placed 1,037 of
these households, or 65 percent of the
total. As a result, advocates say, more
and more fire victims are languishing in
city shelters or living in overcrowded
situations with friends and relatives.
Acosta, for example, has been in the
shelter now for half a year, and is doubt-
ful she will ever see results from the
relocation program.
Homeless Stigma
Families made homeless by fire may
not fit everyone's conception of "the
homeless," but they bear the same stigma
and often find it even harder to locate a
new home than other homeless New
Yorkers. At a time when government
officials increasingly make distinctions
between the so-called "deserving"
homeless-people who have lost their
homes through no fault of their own and
therefore warrant help-and "undeserv-
ing" homeless, such as people who have
missed their rent payments, the plight
of the fire victims reveals a contradic-
tion that escapes few advocates.
"Given the rhetoric of city officials, it
is somewhat ironic that families who
have become homeless because of fires
are actually spending a longer time in
the shelters," charges Steven Banks of
the Legal Aid Society's Homeless
Family Rights Project.
"If the city can't house burned-out
families ," adds Mary Brosnahan of the
Coalition for the Homeless, "then what
hope can we hold that they'll effectively
institute policies for the other 100,000
homeless New Yorkers?"
Legally Obliged
Since the 1970s, HPD has been legally
obliged to offer temporary shelter and
assistance in locating permanent
housing to anyone displaced by a fire or
a vacate order. In cases where people
are burned out of their buildings, HPD' s
UJ Division of Relocation Operations places
~ families with children in apartment-
~ style homeless shelters and people with-
out children in motels or single-room
occupancy hotels. Roughly half of the
tenants decide they would rather live
somewhere else-most frequently
doubled-up with friends or relatives-
while HPD tries to find them permanent
housing.
For those who do choose to live in
the city shelters, the average length of
time they spend there is about eight
months, according to HPD spokesperson
Valerie Jo Bradley. That's several weeks
longer than the time spent by families
who come into the shelter system for
more common reasons such as domestic
abuse or an inability to pay the rent. For
individuals or couples without children,
the average wait is about a year.
One reason for the long wait is the
tenant screening policy of The New
York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).
More than two years ago, in the midst of
a campaign by the authority's tenants
denouncing inadequate security and the
dearth of social services in the projects,
the Housing Authority
imposed strict back-
ground checks on all
prospective tenants. The
authority also reduced the
quota of public housing
apartments reserved for
homeless people, re-
sponding to tenants who
blamed formerly home-
less families in the
projects for deteriorating
conditions there. Up until
then, public housing had
been the primary source
of new homes for HPD's
relocated families.
members and she volunteered her former
boyfriend's name. "There was nothing
to suggest that she was not living with
him," Sullivan says. Nuiiez counters
that she was asked who the father of her
month, landlord bonuses available
under the EARP program were signifi-
cantly reduced; see Briefs, page 5).
But most households burned out or
vacated from their apartments have not
benefited from EARP's
expansion, because only
a handful are eligible. To
qualify, the head of the
household must be on
public assistance, have
children and spend at
least 12 weeks in a shel-
ter. Many of the families
awaiting assistance from
HPD's relocation office
opt to stay with family or
friends or are not receiv-
ing public assistance and
so are automatically dis-
qualified. Others have no
children.
While the authority set
aside 710 apartments for
HPD clients in 1993,
several hundred were
never taken. "Tougher
screening and tighter
admissions are the reason
"EARP is closed to a
lot of these people," ex-
plains Nancy Rosen-
bloom of the Legal Aid
Society's Homeless
Family Rights Project. "I
The tenant screening policies of tile New Yoril CIty HousIng Authority make it extra-
ordinarily dlfllcult for fire ic:tIms to get an a.,artment In tile projects. The authority
rejec:ted Catherine Nunez (above, left, with Mlryam Acosta and l.uc:y Fujita) because of a
former boyfriend's c:rimlnal record_
don't see why it shouldn't
be open to them. 1 suppose the drafters
of this regulation never took them into
account."
for that," says Tim Sullivan, a NYCHA
spokesperson, indicating that many of
the families have problems that
disqualify them from public housing.
Indeed, the number of families in the
emergency relocation program that
received apartments in the projects
dropped from 768 in 1990 to less than
400 last year, according to HPD.
"We can't get Housing Authority
apartments anymore," complains
TommieHatcher,anHPDemployeewho
helps people in temporary hotels find
permanent housing. "If you don't smile
the right way, you can get turned down."
Criminal Record
Catherine Nuiiez, who lost her apart-
ment to a fire and lived in a homeless
shelter for almost two years, was inter-
viewed for public housing less than
three months after entering the shelter.
But the Housing Authority told her that
she and her three-year-old son were
rejected for an apartment because her
son's father was incarcerated for drug
possession.
The criminal records of absent family
members are commonly considered in
the background checks, according to
Sullivan. In fact, if a prospective tenant
has been incarcerated or on probation
within five years of applying for an
apartment, he or she will be rejected, he
says. In Nunez' case, Sullivan claims
that she was asked about her family
child was, not whether he was part of
the family. "I told them he doesn't live
with me anymore," she says.
Legal advocates charge that the
screening system is rejecting people with
far more innocent backgrounds than
Nunez' former boyfriend, however.
"We've had a person denied based on a
traffic infraction and others denied based
on violations such as jumping a subway
turnstile on a single occasion," says
Ann Pegg Biddle, staff attorney for MFY
Legal Services.
Housing Authority spokesperson
John Hamill concedes that Biddle's
charges could be accurate. "The way it's
set up now, you could be kept out for a
violation, or for hopping a turnstile,"
confirms Hamill. "The new chairman
[Ruben Franco, appointed in February]
hasn' t formulated a policy" about
whether or not to change the rules,
Hamill says.
One Alternative
For most homeless families, one
alternative to public housing is the
Emergency Assistance Rehousing
Program (EARP), which became the
city's primary rehousing initiative for
all homeless families when officials
doubled its size in 1992. EARP offers
landlords thousands of dollars in
bonuses and guaranteed federal rent
subsidies in exchange for signing leases
with families living in the shelters. (Last
Desperate Race
The crisis in relocation services
comes as bankers and tax collectors are
engaging in an increasingly desperate
race to collect debts on apartment
buildings in low income neighborhoods.
Recent studies show that more property
owners are allowing their buildings to
fall into both physical and fiscal
disrepair than in years past. A report on
affordable housing by the Community
Service Society, published last fall,
found that about one-sixth of the
privately-owned rental apartments in
the city-about 140,000 units-are at
risk of falling into some form of fore-
closure. Meanwhile, the Census
Bureau's Housing and Vacancy Survey
for 1991 found an increasing number of
hazardous conditions in the city's
privately-owned affordable apartments.
It's a downward spiral that for many
buildings ends in flames or abandon-
ment-and that, too, is happening at a
stunningly rapid rate. During the eight
months between July 1, 1993, and the
end of February, 1994, the city's code
inspectors closed down 221 apartments
inManhattan,BrooklynandtheBronx-
the vast majority of them in Harlem. For
the entire year between July 1992 and
June 1993, inspectors closed down onl y
CITY UMITS/ APRIL 1994/7
94 apartments. And the 1993-94
numbers cover only vacate orders issued
because of failed building systems such
as plumbing or heating. Comparable
numbers for fires are not yet available.
No Curtains
Back in the shelters, as the wait
stretches from months into years, fami-
lies must obey curfews, tolerate regular
intrusions by social work staff and keep
their rooms as plain as they were the
day they moved in.
Sonia Cardona has lived in a Harlem
shelter for more than five months and
has yet to be shown an apartment by the
city, she says. Meanwhile, rat infesta-
tion has been the scourge of the shelter,
she and other residents say. There are
rat holes in the otherwise spotless rooms
where she, her boyfriend and six
children live. It is a situation Cardona
has always dreaded. "I always told my
kids, as long as I'm strong I'd never have

to come into a place like this."
Restrictions against putting pictures
on the walls or moving in their own
furniture have made life in the shelter
hard to bear, says Lucy Fujita, a 51-year-
old former nurse who lost her Manhat-
tan Valley home of more than 20 years
to a fire in May, 1992. She suffers from
a spinal disability and now lives in the
Convent Avenue family center with her
two grandchildren.
"I want a place where 1 can say, 'This
is mine,'" she notes bitterly. "This place
here is not mine, it belongs to the city.
You can't put up curtains. 1 have no
furniture of my own. You can't have
visitors except for certain hours .... I'm
tired of this place, there's no privacy
here." HPD's Bradley says Fujita has
been offered several opportunities to
move into public housing and apart-
ments owned by the agency; Fujita
replies, however, that Bradley is
incorrect, and that she was not shown
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a/APRIL 1994/CITY UMITS
an apartment by the city until three
months ago. She is now waiting to move
into a privately-owned apartment
through the EARP program.
HPD employee Tommie Hatcher says
that the fastest she can relocate people
is "about six months," and says a year's
wait for relocation into permanent hous-
ing is considered "a good, quick time."
She also says that many of the units that
do become available are oflow quality.
"I have to take my people to apartments
1 wouldn't have my dog live in." And
that, she says, is the biggest problem of
all: there simply are no decent apart-
ment.s available. "Housing resources are
really the pits." D
Jesse Drucker is a freelance reporter
based in Manhattan.
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CITY UMITS/APRlL 1994/9
ower 0
A project founded by the Quakers tackles urban violence.
BY ALEXIA LEWNES
V
iolence is woven into the fabric of our city. Men
and women are murdered for $20 and for 20
cents. Teenagers kill one another over sneakers,
jackets, or a disrespectful look. Children plan
their own funerals. On television, brutality is
portrayed as ordinary and amusing, reinforcing the convic-
tion that violence is the common way to resolve conflict. But
if there can be another way of dealing with life in New York,
35-year-old Eric T. has pledged
to find it.
Eric is one of 16 men, all
residents of STAR House, a
voluntary drug treatment center
at the Greenpoint Men's Shelter
in Brooklyn, taking part in a
weekend-long Alternatives to
Violence Project (A VP) work-
shop. "The bottom line in the
streets is kill or be killed," says
Eric, who has spent eight years
of his life in prison. "I want to
learn to live by what my mom
used to say, 'Live and let live.'"
For two and a half days, the
men in this group will explore
creative and nonviolent ways of
dealing with conflict. With the
help of three facilitators, they
will share personal experiences
and develop self-esteem and
self-confidence while learning
skills oflistening, observing and
cooperating. "The workshop
enables participants to experi-
ence how wonderful a positive
relationship can be," says Paddy
Lane, program coordinator of
the AVP/Metro office and a facilitator for the STAR House
group. "You have to enjoy nonviolence before you can work
out your differences in a positive way."
This is the message of the Alternatives to Violence Project,
a rapidly growing effort, founded by Quakers, to help men,
women and children explore nonviolence-not just as a
means of resolving conflicts, but as a way of understanding
10/APRIL 1994/CITY UMITS
their personal problems and ambitions and of solving one of
the foremost crises confronting the nation's inner-city
communities.
A Different Way
The participants this weekend come from diverse back-
grounds. Some have held jobs as custodial workers, security
guards, medical technicians. Others have supported them-
a:
~
selves through odd jobs, both
legal and illegal, and some have
been in prison. "Not all are
violent, but all are angry, and
looking for a positive way to
express that anger," says Jose
Quinones, one of the facilita-
tors for the weekend.
The facilitators-Quinones,
Lane and Trace Gaskin, an
8th grade social studies teacher
at JHS 43 in Harlem-begin
the first session on Friday even-
ing by reviewing the work-
shop's five goals: affirmation,
communication, cooperation,
community building and
conflict resolution. "You're
here to find out there's a
different way to live," says
Quinones.
The men sit quietly,
slumped in folding chairs
arranged in a circle, their legs
stretched out and arms locked
~ across their chests. A sweat-
~ shirt hood conceals one face, a
,a'i tilted baseball cap another.
They begin to stir when
they are asked to introduce themselves. Each must preface
his name with a positive adjective that will then become his
nickname for the remainder of the weekend. Moving around
the circle, participants meet Trusting Thomas, Explosive
Eric, Action Alfred, Winning Warren, Training Ted, Miracle
Mike and Reasonable Ron. Resigned skeptics submit to their
impulses to smirk and laugh.
On this first night, the men, divided in pairs, are asked to
tell one another positive things about themselves for three
minutes. It's hard for some, but others are surprised to
discover qualities in themselves they had long forgotten.
"Always affirming yourself gives you a positive outlook,"
says Quinones (a.k.a. Helpful Jose). "If you can listen to what
the other guy is saying, you might identify with the positive.
There's little room to feel bad and give into other things."
Turned it Around
Quinones does not underestimate that power. After years
of drug use that landed him homeless in Brooklyn at the age
of 40, collecting cans and sleeping in abandoned cars and
buildings, he decided to get help and turn his life around.
Once a resident of STAR House him-
city's social problems, requests for assistance from commu-
nities, homeless shelters and other groups have steadily
increased.
Something in Common
On Saturday morning at STAR House, the men are a bit
more relaxed than they were the previous evening. Through-
out the day, they participate in exercises working on commu-
nication, cooperation and trust. They begin to recognize they
have things in common with each other, and this helps to
form a foundation for further communication.
"The power resides in each and everyone of us to take a
negative situation and change it to the positive, based on an
ability to communicate and recognize inherent good quali-
self, Quinones is now a substance abuse
counselor at Momentum Project-a sup-
port service and nutritional program-as
well as an A VP volunteer. "It's a fallacy
that once you reach a certain point you
can't change," he says. "I messed up
forty years of my life, and in two years
I've turned it around."
messed up
forty years of
my life, and
ties with another person," says Lane.
"Once we make that connection on that
level, we won't deal with him the same
way."
A VP participants learn that anger is a
normal emotion, neither a good nor a
bad thing. What's good and bad is how
anger is handled. Members of the group
practice how to express dissatisfaction
without putting another person on the The Alternatives to Violence Project
was founded in 1975, when. inmates at
in two years
I've turned it around.
Green Haven Prison in upstate New York asked local Quakers
for help working with youth gangs on conflict resolution
issues. The Quakers, a prominent Christian sect whose explo-
ration of the consequences of violence is rooted in a 17th
century pacifist theology, have long been in the vanguard of
anti-war movements worldwide.
Over the years, the program they developed grew beyond
the prison's walls as individuals took the workshop concept
to other states and countries. Funded primarily by private
donations, grants and some workshop fees, A VP is now
operating in prisons and communities in 20 states and
several other countries, including New Zealand, Australia,
Canada, England and Central America. In New York State,
AVP runs nearly 400 workshops each year, many of them in
the more than 30 maximum and minimum security state
prisons, as well as a pilot program at Rikers Island.
"It's part of the rehabilitation process," says Stephen
Machon, assistant director of the AIDS in Prison Project for
the Correctional Association of New York. "It provides a safe
place for people to vent their feelings and find support they
may not ordinarily get. It teaches techniques that a person can
adapt to his own life structure so he can respond instead of
react to situations."
All the facilitators are volunteers. They include doctors,
homeless people, teachers, social workers, nurses, lawyers,
business people, prison inmates-ail sharing the belief that
aggression is learned behavior that can be unlearned.
The local organization, A VP/Metro, covers the New York
City region from its headquarters on Rutherford Place in
Manhattan. The group has trained 172 facilitators, about a
third of whom are actively running workshops and other
related programs. As violence rises to the top of the list of the
defensive. "We always feel that there
has to be a winner and a loser," says Lane. "Here, we learn
there can be two winners."
Throughout the Saturday sessions, people become more
relaxed and there's more conversation during the breaks. By
early evening, a visible transformation has taken place.
"I just want to say something to the group before we leave,"
says Explosive Eric. "All my life I've lived in fear on the
streets. I was always fearing reprisals and never had peace,"
he says. Taking a deep breath, he continues. "For the first
time in years, I feel like I don't have to look over my shoulder
and watch my back." He pauses and looks around the circle.
"I just want to say thank you." The group applauds. A few nod
their heads and smile. They feel better too.
Rising Anguish
Despite the rising level of anguish over the problem of
violence these days, recent studies show that most Ameri-
cans are no more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than
they were 10 years ago.
Rather, it is urban African Americans who have the most
to fear: the rate at which black men and youths have become
victims of violent crime has soared since the early 1980s,
according to a report by the Joint Center for Political and
Economic Studies, based in Washington, D.C. And New York
City's Department of Health reports that homicide was the
leading cause of death among all youths between 15 and 24
years of age in 1992; 74 percent of those killed were black
males, most of whom knew their killer. "People used to listen
to one another," says Quinones. "Today, nobody has the
patience. It's an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. We're going
straight for the jugular."
Policymakers now recognize that violence is a . public
CITY UMITS/APRIL 1994/11
health issue-not just a question of crime prevention-and
that creative strategies are needed to deal with it. "If you look
at where people are getting killed and injured, it's not just in
the commission of crimes. There's a rise in suicides and
overall interpersonal violence," says Roger Hayes, director of
the Injury Prevention Program for the city's Department of
Health.
The Quakers' anti-violence project primarily addresses
communities with a high potential for trouble. And poverty
is frequently part of the equation.
Studies have shown that poverty vastly increases the risk
of violence in a person's life. "The more powerless people
feel, the less effectively they demand observance of standards
of behavior ," writes Dr. Deborah
psychology at Long Island University and also a member of
the AP A Commission of Youth and Violence. "Parents who
condone the use of interpersonal violence give their children
a strong message and encourage them to fight."
Like Eric and his son, most of the men in the room learned
to embrace violence as children. "I grew up on violence,"
says 35-year-old Winning Warren in a disarmingly gentle
voice. "All I knew was hit, hit, hit-from my alcoholic dad,
my friends, my brother. If you don't get what you want, you
hit or hate."
The older a child, the more difficult it is to change
aggressive behavior. And for adults, it is harder still. It is
reasonable, therefore, to assume that a single weekend work-
shop won't change years of learned be-
urrounded
by brutality,
havior: "You definitely have to con-
sciously keep these ideas in your head,"
says Action Alfred.
it can be
difficult to
Prothrow-Stith in her book, Deadly Con-
sequences, published in 1991. "The more
that rules are breached, the more de-
graded everyday experiences become ....
After awhile it seems everyone drinks,
or takes drugs or acts out violently,"
observes Prothrow-Stith, a physician and
assistant dean at the Harvard University
School of Public Health.
Nor are children immune to violence place your trust in
Midway through the weekend, an
exercise called "Battle Line" reminds
the group how difficult it is to break old
habits. Lined up in two facing rows, each
man is instructed to get his opponent to
his side of the line "by any means neces-
sary." At the count of three, with heels
dug in, the men try to yank one another
across an imaginary line, some falling to
and anger. "Young people are self-arming nonviolence.
themselves out offear," says Dr. Barbara
Barlow, Chief of Pediatric Surgery and
director of the Injury Prevention Program at Harlem Hospital.
"They get involved in altercations and don't know how to get
out of situations and maintain their dignity." Barlow offers
high praise for AVP, which has given workshops to teachers,
counselors and health care workers from Central Harlem's
School District 5. With the help of A VP volunteer Trace
Gaskin, Barlow recently introduced the anti-violence pro-
gram to the 7th grade at JHS 43. "AVP gives you a real
understanding of what provokes violence and teaches you
interactive skills and techniques to avoid violence," Barlow
explains.
Surrounded
But when you are surrounded by brutality, it can be
difficult to place your trust in nonviolence. At STAR House,
Eric T. recalls the day his 12-year-old son was shot. He cannot
forget the sight of his son's limp body, the blood seeping
through his clothes.
Though his son survived, today, nearly a decade later, Eric
wonders about tomorrow and the day after. "My stepfather
taught me how to make money, to hurt people, protect my
property, and that's how I brought up my son," he says.
Recalling the years he spent in prison, Eric adds, "I'm worried
about him following in my footsteps. He's dead set on that
way of life."
The strongest predictor of a child's involvement in vio-
lence is a history of previous violence, according to a report
by the American Psychological Association (AP AJ. "Violence
is a learned behavior pattern taught by community, media
and parents," notes Dr. Eva Feindler, associate professor of
12/ APRIL 1994/CITY UMITS
the floor. But Winning Warren and his
opponent simply change places voluntarily, showing that
intelligent negotiation can achieve the same objective. Mem-
bers of the group are astonished at their own responses. "I
assumed that I should just pull him over," says Action Alfred.
"I'm surprised I hadn't thought about other ways. It shows
how easy it is to use force and be aggressive."
Following Through
Dr. Feindler points out that workshops like A VP need to be
followed through with intensive support so that newly learned
skills can continue to be reinforced. There are no such follow-
up sessions scheduled for the group at STAR House. Still, the
men can practice their skills among themselves informally
for the duration of their stay at the drug program. And some
of them may choose to take an advanced A VP workshop and
train to become facilitators.
Lane concedes that there is, as yet, no way to quantify
A VP's success. While she is looking into ways to evaluate the
project, she believes that for now, A VP's expansion isa strong
indicator of its value.
On Sunday morning at the shelter, it's difficult to remem-
ber that these men have embraced violence most of their
lives. They seem more like school boys as they sing their
favorite songs during an exercise that encourages them to
express and share their talents.
The skiUs learned throughout the weekend are practiced
and tested in a role-play exercise, in which a director and
actors are chosen to perform two scenarios chosen by the
group. In one, a STAR House resident returns home to an
unsupportive family. In the other, "Joe" confronts his brother-
;
in-law, "Mike," who has hit his wife.
In the second skit, the actor playing Joe gets frustrated
with Mike and walks out, ending the scene without accom-
plishing anything. The group is tough on him, observing that
he gave up too easily. He tries again, this time using the tools
he has learned-reaching cornmon ground with his oppo-
nent, listening, being patient and persistent while avoiding
placing blame or making threats. He also uses surprise and
humor to good effect. The men see how they can defuse a
potentially violent situation. They also see that it can be hard
work.
At the end of the weekend, group members take turns
completing the phrase, "One thing I learned about myself in
this group is .. . "
"I learned that I'm a heck of a nice guy," says one man, who
appears to be in his late 20s and is proud to have been
reminded of something he had long forgotten.
"I realize that I already have a lot of the tools and skills I
learned here, and that I just have to use them in a positive
way," says Explosive Eric. "I don't know what will happen
when I leave here, but I'm going to try to do it different this
time." 0
Alexia Lewnes a freelance writer based in Manhattan.
Editors' note: All the information shared for this article is
published with the consent of the participants, who asked
that their full names not be used.
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CITY UMITS/APRIL 1994/13
Clean Sweep
By Steve Mitra
Neighborhoods want to be rid of private industry's garbage transfer stations.
T
he South Bronx is home to the
Hunts Point Market Food
Cooperative, the largest food
distribution center on the East
Coast.
The Greenpoint/Williamsburg area
of Brooklyn is one of the last bastions of
a viable manufacturing economy in the
city, with factories dotting the
waterfront that make nationally
distributed goods.
And South Brooklyn's Red
Hook community retains the
functioning remnants of a once
vast port facility.
But in the eyes of unhappy
residents, what these industrial
neighborhoods have most in
common is not what they put
into New York's economy-it's
what they take out: Hunts Point,
Greenpoint/Williamsburg and
Red Hook are home to the city's
largest concentrations of waste
transfer stations, where garbage
is consolidated before being
shipped to landfills north of the
city and out of state. Ever since
the city tightened its rules a few
years ago for dumping garbage at
the municipally-owned Fresh
Kills landfill on Staten Island,
the transfer station industry has
been booming. And residents of
communities zoned for indus-
trial use have been seething.
Noxious Odors
As the locals tell it, the garbage
business affects all aspects of
place for private entrepreneurs who deal
in waste to set up shop.
That argument doesn't hold up with
the people who must live nearby, how-
ever. "Because of our zoning, it's like if
a waste transfer station opens up, it has
to open up here," says John Roberts,
district manager of Community Board 2
"It's clear the operations were never
slated for more affluent and powerful
neighborhoods," McGettrick continues.
"We were targeted because of our
inadequate political power."
Now, with the support of the borough
presidents of the Bronx and Brooklyn,
residents have called for the implem-
entation of a special permitting
process that would trigger
extensive public reviews before
a new transfer station opens up.
While this process is worked out,
residents of Hunts Point and
Red Hook are demanding a
moratorium on the siting of new
transfer stations in their already-
burdened neighborhoods, where
about half of all of New York
City's garbage stations are
located.
Landfills Overflowing
Before 1988, most of the city's
garbage ended up in municipally-
owned landfills in Fresh Kills,
Staten Island and in Edgemere,
Queens. That year, City Hall more
than doubled the fee-from $18
to $40 per cubic yard-for private
carters dumping in the public
landfills, mainly to prevent Fresh
Kills from overflowing before
other means of disposing of the
city's garbage could be devel-
oped. The Edgemere landfill was
shut down in 1991.
u:: The city soon discovered it
til was ill-equipped to deal with the
~ consequences of the change.
their lives: trucks grind through
the streets all day and all night;
the stations often emit noxious
Residents of Hunts Point and Red Hook are demanding a moratorium
on the siting of new transfer stations. "It's clear the operations were
never slated for more afftuent neighborfloods," says Red Hook activist
John Mc:Gettrick, above.
odors that fill the air for several
blocks; and they have been
known to cause neighborhood-wide ro-
dentinfestations when they aren't prop-
erly run. There's nothing complicated
about it, says Susan Peebles, a Red Hook
resident. "Transfer stations can make a
community unlivable."
Private carters haul a little less
than half of the 27,000 tons of
waste generated daily in the five
boroughs. After the fee increase,
To city planners, garbage stations are
simply one of the many practical uses
for empty industrially-zoned land.
Zoning regulations in these areas allow
for heavy manufacturing-a category
that includes noxious uses-without any
special permits, so they are the logical
14/ APRIL 1994/CITY UMnS
in the Bronx, which includes Hunts
Point. "But we don't want to be known
as the waste transfer station capital of
New York City."
"Some things will never be com-
patible with housing," adds John
McGettrick, president of the Red Hook
Civic Association. "Transfer stations are
one of those things." He and others in
Red Hook say the issue isn't really one
of zoning regulations, because regula-
tions can be changed. Rather, it's a
question of politics.
the carters began hauling most of
that waste to cheaper landfill sites
upstate and in Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Indiana and West Virginia, according to
the Department of Sanitation. The use
of transfer stations-where garbage is
shifted from small collection trucks onto
tractor-trailers for the long haul out of
town-mushroomed.
Having a garbage handling plant as a
neighbor was bad enough; what made
matters worse, residents say, was the
near total lack of enforcement by the
city. At the time, transfer stations were
regulated by a jumble of city and state
agencies without any centralized over-
sight. Officials acknowledge that fly-
by-night operators proceeded to plunk
down facilities in vacant lots without
applying for permits from any govern-
ment agency.
"People were suffering from noise,
traffic, odors, and all of this was
happening in violation of everything
that was humanly possible to violate,"
says Inez Pasher, a community activist
in Williamsburg. " It was a real laissez-
faire attitude."
The increased truck traffic also
presented a potential health hazard. A
1993 study by the Environmental
Protection Agency shows a positive
correlation between diesel exhaust and
lung cancer.
According to a survey done for the
Department of Sanitation, by 1990 there
were 212 transfer stations operating with
or without all the requisite permits.
This was 150 more than before the fee
went up at Fresh Kills, according to
William Hewitt, a community liaison
officer with the state's Department of
Environmental Conservation (DEC), one
of the regulating agencies.
Peculiar Odor
GoIten Marine, a Red Hook company
that repairs diesel engines, survived the
almost complete desertion of the
Brooklyn port by the shipping industry,
but it nearly didn't survive the opening
of a transfer station next door in 1990.
That was when employees began to
notice a peculiar odor seeping in through
the wall of the factory that abutted the
transfer station. "It was terrible, it was
making them sick," recalls owner
Norman GoIten.
The DEC shut down the illegal
transfer station for a short time, but
before long it reopened, again without a
permit. The summer heat brought the
stench back full force. In desperation,
GoIten filled in all the cracks in the
wall. Even that didn't do the trick. In
court papers filed later, GoIten states
that his employees "began to experi-
ence nausea and vomiting, eye, throat
and sinus irritations." Employee
absenteeism rose dramatically. "It was
getting impossible to run my business,"
he says.
Blocks away, McGettrick and Judith
Dailey, a vice president of the Red Hook
Tenants Association, which represents
about 8,000 public housing residents in
Red Hook Houses, fought to shut down
another station that had also opened
without a permit. "In the summer, you
couldn't walk past it without getting
sick to your stomach," Dailey recalls.
It was a struggle to get the city to pay
attention. "City officials said they had
limited resources. Basically, you got a
runaround," says McGettrick.
Eventually, Sanitation Department
officials did the right thing and closed
them both down-but not until long
after the City Council delegated central
regulatory powers to the agency under
Local Law 40. By 1992, activists say,
licensing and enforcement became better
coordinated-thanks in part to the
vigilance of community residents.
Mergers and Acquisitions
In the meantime, a wave of mergers,
acquisitions and bankruptcies changed
the shape of the waste hauling industry.
The restructuring has made it easier to
regulate, officials say, and, for the most
part, those transfer stations still oper-
ating are appropriately licensed.
Currently, there are 119 garbage stations
in New York City, according to DOS.
But they are still mostly concentrated
in the same few neighborhoods. Thanks
in large part to zoning restrictions, there
are currently only three stations in all of
Manhattan. "I'd like to see transfer
stations right next to the office of the
Department of City Planning," exclaims
a frustrated Nina Laboy of the South
Bronx Coalition for Clean Air, which
has advocated a complete ban on any
new transfer stations in the South Bronx.
Residents have long pleaded their
case to the borough presidents of Brook-
lyn and the Bronx. In response, the
borough executives are demanding the
implementation of a special permitting
system that will require new stations to
be approved through the daunting
Uniform Land Use Review Procedure
(ULURP)-a six-month process that
requires review by the local community
board, the borough president, the City
Planning Commission and the City
Council.
The Department of City Planning
opposes a ULURP process for transfer
stations, and instead would opt to limit
them to sites more than 300 feet away
from residential areas, according to
Marilyn Mammano, director of zoning
and urban design for the department.
The borough presidents' and the depart-
ment's proposals will be reviewed by
the City Planning Commission this
summer.
For some residents, neither proposal
goes far enough. "We need a respite
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CITY UMnS/APRIL 1994/15
ere
Housing Court slouches toward the millennium.
BY JILL KIRSCHENBAUM
More than 20 years have passed since the state legislature
gave birth to New York City's Housing Court, and its original
goal is even further from realization today
than when it was created in 1973.
This is the
first ofa
twq-part
series.
Lawmakers had hoped to reverse the
deteriorating conditions of the city's pri-
vately-owned rental stock: strict obser-
vance of housing codes would be the method; the court was
to be the judicious enforcer, ensuring landlords' compliance
and levying fines on
those found to be in dis-
regard of the law.
Instead, the official
tally of housing code
violations-everything
from collapsing walls
and exposed wiring to
sagging floors and bro-
ken boilers-today
stands at more than 3
million. An additional
100,000 violations are
added to the list each
year by city inspectors.
As if those numbers
aren't discouraging
enough, of the 300,000
or so cases that come before New York's Housing Court
judges each year, 92 percent are brought, not by tenants, but
by landlords seeking redress for their tenants' failure to pay
the rent-the first phase in a legal eviction process that
annually forces 24,000 families and individuals out of their
apartments, swelling the waiting rooms and holding pens of
New York's overwhelmed-and overwhelmingly expensive-
homeless shelter system. It is certainly not what the drafters
of Civil Court Act 110, the legislation authorizing the creation
of Housing Court, intended. No law degree is needed to
understand the statute's opening words:
"A part of the [Civil) court shall be devoted to actions and
proceedings involving the enforcement of state and local
laws for the establishment and maintenance of housing
standards, including but not limited to the multiple dwelling
16/ APRIL 1994/CITY UMITS
law and the housing maintenance code, building code and
health code of the City of New york .... " Clearly, the authors
were primarily interested in one thing-safe, healthy, habit-
able apartments for New York City's tenants.
But if the path to hell is paved with good intentions, then
the failure of Housing Court is a classic case. "In light of the
stated purposes ... itis surprising that nearly the entire caseload
of the court comprises rent collection and removal of ten-
ants," reads a report issued four months ago by The Fund for
Modern Courts, a non-
partisan, nonprofit
court-reform group. The
organization is by no
means alone in its as-
sessment.
"It's been very disap-
pointing," says former
Assembl ymember Rose-
mary Gunning, a co-
sponsor of the 1972 leg-
islation. "This body was
set up to improve hous-
ing, and it hasn't."
"Dealing with code
violations? It's gone
way past that," adds
Assemblymember
Alexander "Pete" Grannis of Manhattan, former chair of the
Assembly'S housing committee. "The notion of code enforce-
ment has gone completely by the wayside."
H
ardly cause to celebrate, it would seem. But at a
recent luncheon sponsored by the New York County
Lawyers Association, the city's landlord and hous-
ing attorneys gathered with court personnel, judges, repre-
sentatives of the city Bar and other dignitaries to do just that.
The tenor of the speeches was congratulatory, as vigorous
pats on the back were divvied out to everyone from the clerks
who tirelessly man the crowded corridors of Housing Court
to Civil Court Administrative Judge Jacqueline Silbermann,
who oversees the entire operation.
Only one of the luncheon's
speakers, the Honorable Bruce J.
Gould, president of the Associa-
tion of Housing Court Judges,
struck a less sanguine tone in his
remarks. Gould is recognized as
the principal gadfly of the institu-
tion, and his reputation as a dissi-
dent in the politics of housing
dates back to his days as attorney
for the 1963 Harlem Rent Strike.
He wasted little time on pleasant-
ries, touching instead on the failed
goals and unkept promises of
Housing Court.
That Gould's somewhat pessi-
mistic tone was greeted with luke-
warm applause speaks volumes
about the inherent lethargy and
structural weaknesses of the Hous-
ing Court. For two decades, the
institution has functioned as some-
thing of a backwater, understaffed
and handicapped by a near-circus
atmosphere defined by facilities so inadequate and so cramped
as to seem a vestige of the 19th century.
When tenants walk into Housing Court-there is one each
in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens-they have
very little indication of where to go. Rooms are marked in
gibberish and people appear lost and uncertain as they wait
in lines streaming out into the corridors. In Brooklyn, the
court is dirty and cramped; there is hardly any place to sit and
catch one's breath. In the Bronx, most of the courtrooms are
in a hot, crowded and noisy basement, where landlord
attorneys set up shop for the day, hanging their coats on
stands in the judges' chambers.
The caseload is much larger than the budget or the space
allocated to accommodate it. Thirty-five judges are expected
to handle a workload that virtually every observer agrees
requires 50, and assembly-line jurisprudence is countenanced
as a reasonable substitute for the real thing. Most appearances
before a judge last less than 10 minutes. Ninety percent of the
landlords have legal counsel; 90 percent of the tenants do not.
Men and women from the city's poorest neighborhoods,
many with limited English skills, are expected to be able to
manage on their own, without counsel, as they attempt to
avoid winding up homeless and on the street.
But the court is not so much the culprit in this story as it
is one of the victims, orphaned by its creators and left to
mutate in its own quirky, incorrigible way. It is its flawed
infrastructure-including a contradictory administrative sys-
tem undermined by turf wars and a vague disciplinary
procedure that leaves judges virtually unaccountable for
their actions-that has made this mutation possible, obscur-
ing the court's original mission and undermining realistic
hopes for reform.
J
ust as the authors of Civil Court
Act 11 0 en visioned a relati vel y
simple process for enforcing
building maintenance laws, the
mechanism they laid out to ad-
minister and oversee the court's
operation was equally simple in
its design. Oversight of Housing
Court would be added to the du-
ties of the administrative judge of
the Civil Court. The judge would
appoint an Advisory Council to
solicit, interview and draw up a
list of candidates for judgeships,
and would make appointments
based on its recommendations.
Reappointments, according to the
statute, would be "at the discre-
tion of the administrative judge."
The Advisory Council would
monitor the daily workings of the
court, hold public hearings and
publish an annual report with
recommendations for improve-
ments.
The statute also spelled out that the 14-member Advisory
Council should represent a cross-section of public interests,
with two members each from the real estate industry, tenant
organizations, civic groups and bar associations, four from
the general public, and one apiece from the city and state
governments.
In theory, four short paragraphs in the law books spelled
out the entire administrative process of Housing Court. In
practice, however, it was never to be that simple.
A
n entity little known to the public, the Advisory
Council has for many years come under fire from
lawyers, advocates and other Housing Court observ-
ers, who have expressed dissatisfaction with the way it does,
or does not, function. The council has failed to release its
annual report on the court, for example, since 1986.
"So there is no central repository ofinformation regarding
the Housing Court or its activities," observes Manhattan
tenant attorney and longtime court watcher Steven Smollens.
"That means that no one has been consistently watchdogging
the process. And those that have barked and howled have
been howling alone in the night."
Smollens and others have suggested that council mem-
bers, many of whom have been serving for more than a
decade, no longer have the ability to see the Housing Court
with fresh eyes.
"Or they are not in the best position any longer to be
critical ofits process," he says. "If they have not carried out
their reporting responsibilities in seven years, it would be
hard to report critically on the court, or themselves."
CITY UMITS/APRIL 1994/17
"Supposedly there are bylaws," notes Maria Mottola,
executive director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing
Court, a tenant advocacy group. "But [the Advisory Council]
won't release them. What are they? What's a quorum? If they
initially break down into teams of two to interview candi-
dates, can both be landlord attorneys? Is there a rule against
that? It is bizarre that this isn't taken all that seriously."
Indeed, repeated efforts by City Limits to obtain a copy of
the bylaws were unsuccessful.
"The council exists in the statute so that the public has
some say in who Housing Court judges are," Mottola says,
adding that the body's lack of candor betrays its very mission,
power to appoint and reappoint judges.
Disagreements came to a head in 1991, and brought the
review process to a halt for over a year. Rosemary Gunning,
a member of the council since its inception, recalls a pro-
tracted wrangle over the reappointment of
two judges who had numerous complaints lodged against
them-Judge Emanuel Haber in Queens, for allegedly making
repeated discriminatory remarks about Hispanic litigants,
and Judge Jack Dubinsky of Manhattan, whose courtroom
demeanor was described as erratic and bizarre. In fact, says
Gunning, the Advisory Council voted not to recommend
Haber for reappointment when his term expired, and the
as does the current makeup of its mem-
bership, six out of 14 of whom have
direct ties to landlord law firms or real
estate companies. The two members
listed as Bar Association representatives,
for example, are Warren Estis, a partner
in Rosenberg & Estis, a prominent land-
lord firm, and Herbert Rubin, an attor-
ney and real estate operator.
Tenant advocates are not the council's
only critics. Landlords charge that the
Those who have
howled have
been howling
alone in the
night.
judiciary committee of the Association
of the Bar of the City of New York, which
over the years has been invited to par-
ticipate in the review process, voted "No"
on Dubinsky. But then-DCA chief Mat-
thew Crosson indicated he planned to
overrule the critics.
Section F of Civil Court Act 110 states
that the judges "shall be appointed by
the administrative judge." Until 1989,
that was Civil Court Administrative Judge
Israel Rubin, who maintained a firm grip appointment system is flawed and that
too many tenant-friendly attorneys wind up on the bench.
According to Jack Freund, vice president of the Rent Stabili-
zation Association, a landlords' lobbying group, "We've tried
to find out what goes on in that [nomination] process. We'd
like it made more public and the backgrounds of candidates
made more available. We'd like to see a more open process."
Others suggest that the Advisory Council's lack of open-
ness has little to do with secrecy and everything to do with
money: the council has no budget and no staff, and its
members are unpaid.
"The council was originally created to supervise a much
smaller court," says its chairman, David Rosenberg, who
points out that the number of Housing Court judges has
increased from 10 to 35 since the 1970s. "No one envisioned
it would be reviewing the qualifications of as many candi-
dates each year as it is, or working as long hours as it does. The
whole concept was it would be a voluntary part-time thing."
Over 100 people applied for the five positions on the
bench now vacant, Rosenberg notes. In addition, each sitting
judge is supposed to be reviewed by the council at the end of
his or her five-year term.
Mottola, however, believes Rosenberg's excuses belie the
council's lackadaisical attitude, one that is indicative of the
degree to which the needs of the Housing Court are not being
taken seriously.
N
ot that the Advisory Council has been completely idle
in its duties as guardian of the court. Recent years
have found the council at the center of a procedural
and philosophical power struggle with the chief of the Office
of Court Administration (DCA) over who actually has the
18/APRlL 1994/CITY UMITS
on this authority during his tenure. But authority shifted
when Rubin was replaced by Jacqueline Silbermann, who
admits ceding final decision-making power to the DCA's
Crosson.
Caught in the grinding shift of these gears, the fate of
judges Haber and Dubinsky lingered in limbo. They were
given temporary month-to-month extensions by Judge
Silbermann as the matter dragged on while Crosson deter-
mined whether or not to make the reappointments over the
objections of the Advisory Council and the Bar-objections,
says Silbermann, "which are not easy to overcome and are
not taken lightly." The situation finally led to a lawsuit filed
by South Brooklyn Legal Services in 1992, charging that the
statute did not provide for such temporary extensions and
that the judges' terms had in fact expired, requiring them to
go through the entire review process all over again if they
were to return to their posts.
It is more than an exercise in legal arcana, says Raun
Rasmussen, the Legal Services attorney arguing the case. "We
felt the DCA was usurping the authority of the Advisory
Council's role in reappointing these people and passing them
over. It is significant because no one gets to be a judge without
being reviewed by the Advisory Council. But you can be
reappointed without it." In other words, the ambiguity of the
statute leaves the door open for incompetent or ethically
compromised judges to remain on the bench.
The case is indicative of the messy, murky way in which
the Housing Court is administered. "My main concern," says
Rasmussen, "is that there should be some accountability and
predictability to this process. We should be able to hold
someone accountable. How it works, who makes the deci-
sions, and under what time frame."
Outraged by Crosson's decision to overrule their objec-
tions-both Haber and Dubinsky were reappointed-the
Advisory Council conducted something of a sit-down strike,
refusing to perform their statutory duties until Crosson re-
considered their role in the reappointment process. Ulti-
mately, says Rosenberg, the matter was left unresolved.
"Crosson outlasted us. And we didn't want to do any damage
to the court by continuing" with the strike. They are hoping
their relationship with Leo Milonas, who replaced Crosson at
the helm of the OCA last year, will be a
little easier.
N
o less controversial has been the
manner in which Housing Court
judges are disciplined. Once
again, jurisdictional minutiae and the
inadvertent bungling of the original leg-
islation has led to a jerry-built system
that critics consider inadequate.
process rights of landlords are routinely violated, and
that there is a sys- tematic bias in the court against prop-
ertyowners.
Only three letters of admonition-all of them private-
have been issued to judges during Silbermann's tenure, she
reports, although one, against Judge Dianne Gasworth,
wound up being re- ported in a number of major newspa-
pers. Gasworth was censured in 1990 for soliciting attor-
neys to assist her in a bid for a Civil
Court seat, but she retained her judge-
ship. She is retiring from the bench at
the end of her term, which expires this
year.
I
n its original incarnation, the Hous-
ing Court was an unlikely place from
which to launch a Civil Court career.
But that, too, has changed over the years,
another unforeseen consequence of the
disproportionate number of eviction
proceedings clogging the daily calendar.
The adjudication of those proceed-
ings, made even more complicated by a
~ whole new body of law developed
Z during the co-op conversion mania of
~
~ the 1980s, has dramatically altered the
Technically speaking, Housing Court
judges are not true judges at all, but
"hearing officers" imbued with roughly
the same powers as their constitutional
brethren. As a result, in 19135 the state
Commission on Judicial Conduct deter-
mined it had no jurisdiction to disci-
pline Housing Court judges when they
are accused of misconduct. So the re-
sponsibility was passed to the judges'
"Supposedly the AdvIsory CouneU has byIaws," basic job description of the judges, critics
say. Nowadays jurists must bring to the
court a rigorous understanding of a range
.. p Maria Mottola of the City-WIde Task Force on
Housing Court. "But the COlIne. won't release them.
boss, the Civil Court Administrative Judge, and the judges-in-
charge of the individual Civil Courts in each borough. It is
their duty to review complaints from attorneys and litigants
and recommend whether or not discipline is warranted. This
might include a private letter of admonition, a public letter,
or the recommendation of a hearing regarding the removal of
that judge from the bench.
History shows that the method has no teeth, however, or
at least not terribly sharp ones. "We haven't removed any-
one," acknowledges Silbermann. Usually, she says, if there
are objections from both the Advisory Council and the bar
association, the judge is not reappointed when his or her five-
year term runs out. "It may take a year or two. But that is what
really happens, bottom line."
Such comments do not sit well with critics of the system,
however. The recent report by the Fund for Modern Courts
notes the inherent conflict of interest in the current proce-
dure: "There is no outside independent institution to disci-
pline Housing Court judges .... As the people who essentially
hire the Housing Court judges and work with them on a
regular basis, the administrative judges cannot be completely
unbiased parties."
Jack Freund of the RSA is more pointed in his assessment
of the procedure. "Silbermann has indicated she is, in fact,
powerless to sanction or discipline her judges, other than the
occasional letter of admonition," he states. The RSA is
currently involved in a lawsuit that alleges that the due
of law that goes far beyond issues of maintenance C\Ild repair.
As a result, although once viewed as a somewhat limited
administrative post similar to other civil service jobs, the
professional status of HouSing Court judge has taken on an
added shine in recent years. The job is still unquestionably
the ugly stepsister of the Civil Court system in terms of salary
and position, but its image has shifted as Housing Court
judgeships have increasingly become seen as an entry level
route to full-fledged Civil Court appointments.
"It's definitely a trend lately," says a former judge, notirig
that of the five current vacancies, three are due to upward
mobility. "Housing Court has become a stepping stone to
Civil Court. And the judges are a different, younger breed."
And that, observers believe, has changed the criteria by
which Housing Court judges are selected, reflecting the body
of work that they actually do, rather than what the statute
originally intended them to do. Pragmatists contend that is
not altogether unreasonable, given the day-to-day realities of
the court calendar. But it is yet another wedge nudging the
court, perhaps irrevocably, away from its original mandate of
addressing maintenance and repair issues, and it further
undermines any unified efforts toward reform that the judges
themselves might pursue. What's more, this upward mobility
means there are inevitably many vacancies on the court and
the already overburdened judges who remain must carry a
tremendous additional caseload.
"I'm very concerned now," says Advisory Council mem-
CITY UMITSI APRIL 1994/19
ber Gunning. "In the last ten years, people have been apply-
ing to become Housing Court judges only to get nominated for
higher judgeships. There's a lot of politicking going on, but I
don't know how we can avoid it."
R
egardless of whether or not the workings of the Hous-
ing Court and its administrative entities were deeply
flawed to begin with or developed serious fault lines
over the years, observers say what's really needed today is a
vision of reform and the will to enact it.
Judge Silbermann is most often mentioned as the person
best in a position to spearhead reform. But while she is
credited by many as being a capable day-to-day manager, she
lacks the interest, court watchers say, to take up the mantle of
reform.
Silbermann attributes the tremendous imbalance of evic-
tion proceedings over tenant-initiated repair proceedings-
the latter account for only 3 percent of all Housing Court
cases-to a lack of effort on the part of the court to better
educate people. She says there ought to be more brochures or
videotapes available on how to enter building complaints.
"I don't know why tenants with terrible heat and hot water
conditions or vermin infestation don't bring proceedings,"
she says. "I don't know what we can do about that."
Such an assessment would seem out of
most other proposals that would further devalue rather than
elevate the court.
"It takes the issues and laws out of the court, belittling
housing maintenance as less than a legal issue," says task
force Executive Director Maria Mottola. "We say a safe place
to live is more important than a parking ticket. If the law is to
have any teeth, it should be more judicial, not less judicial."
In any case, says Grannis, without an avenging angel,
Housing Court is destined for nowhere.
"It's going to take someone to make it a crusade to get this
mess cleaned up," Grannis says. He would like to see
Silbermann create a commission to undertake a massive
review of the court. In the meantime, he is working to restore
state funding for city code inspectors.
From his seat on the bench, Judge Bruce Gould has contin-
ued to push ahead with his own program for court reform. He
lobbies tirelessly for 10-year terms for judges. This, he be-
lieves, would not only give them greater independence, but
it would also free up the Advisory Council to spend less time
on interviewing candidates and more time on its watchdog
functions.
State Assemblymembers Vito Lopez of Brooklyn and
Helene Weinstein of Brooklyn are planning a series of joint
hearings in the spring. Legal representation of tenants, says
Lopez, is at the top of his list of concerns. "The lack of
advocacy for poor people has resulted in problems not only
for Housing Court but for keeping fami-
touch, however, given the results of an
oft-cited study by the City-Wide Task
Force on Housing Court. The group found
that even when tenants raised the issue of
repairs during eviction proceedings, "ap-
proximately 70 percent of them got stipu-
lated court orders that did not resolve the
repairs issue at all. However, the tenants
were ordered to pay the rent. All the
Another wedge
nudging the
court away from
its mandate
lies together," he notes. "In poor com-
munities, there is a direct relationship
between Housing Court and stable fam-
ily situations."
And the lawsuit brought by South
Brooklyn Legal Services, which lost its
first round, is now awaiting a hearing
date in the Court of Appeals.
rent." Moreover, the report noted that,
according to a city study, when tenants in nonpayment-of-
rent cases complained in court about bad housing conditions,
95 percent of them were telling the truth.
Various alternative reform measures have been floated
over the years, including a bill Grannis has pushed through
the Assembly in each of the last eight years that would
actually take the responsibility for maintaining code enforce-
ment away from the court and relegate it to a separate agency
akin to the parking violations bureau. Buildings would be
assessed, noncomplying landlords would be ticketed and
fined, and violations would be corrected.
But an unyielding Senate has prevented the passage of that
bill into law, Grannis says. "The Senate doesn't want better
code enforcement, they don't want more effective collection
of fines and they don't want to make the process more user-
friendly," he fumes. Noting the strength of the real estate
lobby, he adds, "The Senate hasn't passed a single bill that
landlords opposed in the last five years."
Advocacy groups like the City-Wide Task Force on Hous-
ing Court oppose measures like Grannis' s, just as they oppose
20/APRIL 1994/CITY UMns
"At first thought, one might ask why
our lawsuit matters," says Raun
Rasmussen, who will be arguing the appeal. Since the judges
at issue in the case were already reappointed and there are no
others languishing in bureaucratic limbo, Rasmussen knows
he will have to come up with a compelling reason for the
Court of Appeals to pay attention.
"What's the big deal? Why shouldn't we just let this whole
sloppy system keep sliding?" asks Rasmussen, wearily. "Well
we're trying to ensure that there are some rules to this game,
and that they are being followed. And that goes hand in hand
with making the court a better place. If Housing Court is a
forum where people's right to stay in an apartment is being
determined, then it's a forum where there should be a lot of
focus to try and improve it."
Meanwhile, 15 candidates are on pins and needles, wait-
ing for the word about which of them will fill the five
vacancies on the Housing Court bench. The announcement
was due last month. 0
Next month: Hanna Liebman looks at the struggle to provide
tenants with a right to counsel.
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CITY UMITSI APRIL 1994/21
Decoding Welfare Reform
By Mimi Abramovitz
and Fred Newdom
T
he federal Family Support Act
of 1988 sought to transform Aid
to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC) from a pro-
gram that makes it possible for single
mothers to stay home with their children
into a mandatory work and training
program. The controversial legislation
was just the first of a recent series of
welfare reforms that seek to dictate the
behavior of women on public assistance.
Some states now deny additional
benefits for children born to women on
welfare. Others cut benefits to families
who fail to see a doctor, keep kids in
school or pay rent on time. In the name
of fraud prevention, some states now
fingerprint welfare mothers. And in the
White House and the Capitol, the current
welfare debate centers around how best
to impose a two-year limit on participa-
tion in the program.
As a candidate, Bill Clinton promised
to "end welfare as we know it. " Advo-
cates and women on public assistance
would also like to change the system "as
we know it " so that AFDC could be both
a decent safety net and a means of
escaping poverty. But it is clear that the
current reform debate has less to do
with practical improvements and more
to do with limiting the length of time a
client can be in the program, and making
that period as difficult as possible.
Frequently, these coercive plans gain
wide public support by playing to a host
of stereotypes and myths about AFDC
and the women who use the program.
The following myths, facts and com-
ments can be used to undermine the
stereotypes-and to build support for
more legitimate social policies based in
fact , not fiction.
-1-
MYTH: Women on welfare have large
families.
FACT: Thetypicalwelfarefamilyiscom-
prised of a mother and two children,
slightly less than the size of the average
family in the United States. Forty-two
percent of AFDC families have only one
child, 30 percent have two. AFDC
families, like other families in the United
States, are getting smaller.
22/ APRIL 1994/CITY LIMITS
-2-
MYTH: Welfare mothers live "high on
the hog. "
FACT: The average combined state
AFDC and food stamp benefit in 1993
was only 65 percent of the poverty level ,
or less than $7,600 for a family of three.
In no state in the union do food stamps
and welfare benefits together lift a family
of three out of poverty. And most AFDC
families are worse off today than their
counterparts were in the 1970s: the real
after-inflation value of the AFDC grant
fell 45 percent from 1972 to 1993, 26
percent if food stamps are counted.
Meanwhile, during the 1980s, the
average pre-tax income of the richest 20
percent of all families rose 77 percent,
while that of the poorest 20 percent
declined by 9 percent.
COMMENT: Instead of helping poor
women and children live high on the
hog, AFDC keeps mother-only families
living in poverty.
-3
MYTH: Welfare recipients are lazy and
do not want to work.
FACT: Of the 14 million AFDC recipi-
ents, only 4.5 million are adults, 90
percent of whom are women. In nearly
60 percent of welfare homes, the
youngest child is under six years of age;
in 30 percent, the youngest is under age
two. Many mothers on public assistance
combine work with welfare, or receive
AFDC benefits in the interim between
jobs. Still others want to work and can't
find jobs (10 percent of all single mothers
are unemployed) or cannot find jobs
that pay enough. The $4.25 an hour
minimum wage is considerably less than
the $6.00 an hour needed to keep a
family of three out of poverty. On aver-
age, employers pay women 70 cents for
every dollar earned by men.
COMMENT: If work was available and
paid enough, fewer people would need
welfare. If taking care of one' s own
children was defined as "work," all
mothers would be working.
-4-
MYTH: Few women on welfare are
white.
FACT: Of all AFDC mothers, 39 percent
are African American, 38 percent are
white, 17 percent are Latina, 3 percent
are Asian, 1 percent are Native Ameri-
can, and 2 percent are of unknown race.
COMMENT: Women of color are over-
represented among those on welfare
because they are overrepresented among
the poor. The idea that AFDC is a
program primarily for women of color is
used to mask the fact that so many
AFDC mothers are white, to divide
women from each other and to make
welfare a tool in the politics of race.
-5-
MYTH: Once on welfare, always on
welfare. Welfare is a trap from which
few escape.
FACT: More than 70 percent of women
on welfare stay on the rolls for less than
two years and only 8 percent stay for
more than eight years. While many
return to AFDC for a period of time
within five years due to a renewed
family crisis or job loss, research on
intergenerational welfare dependency
has not established that daughters of
welfare mothers necessarily end up on
welfare, too. Some do. Some do not.
COMMENT: It is not welfare that is so
hard to escape, it is poverty. Those who
follow their parents onto the welfare
rolls do so because it is very difficult for
children of poor women to work their
way out of poverty, especially in the
current economy of high unemployment
and falling wages. Inadequate educa-
tion and job skills are significant hurdles
for children in poor families. Again, the
minimum wage does not suffice.
-6-
MYTH: Women on welfare have kids for
money. Eliminating AFDC will put an
end to nonmarital births.
FACT: On average, the states provide
about $79 a month per additional child.
Yet despite years of research, studies
have found no link between AFDC grant
levels and births outside of marriage.
Indeed, nonmarital births are no more
frequent in high-benefit states and states
with rising grant levels than in states
with flat or falling AFDC grants.
COMMENT: Like theAFDC mother, the
average taxpayer also receives an annual
grant for children-the tax deduction
for dependents. Yet no one claims that
taxpayers have larger families just to
reduce their taxes. Neither AFDC nor
the tax deduction for dependents are
rewards for having children. Rather,
these income supplements recognize
the high cost of raising children and
their value to society. Moreover, preg-
nancies reflect complex human factors,
not calculated economic decisions.
-7-
MYTH: The AFDC program is costly and
bloated, has enlarged the deficit and
deepened the recession.
FACT: The federal and state govern-
ments together spent $24.9 billion on
welfare in 1992. The federal share
amounted to 1 percent of the entire
federal budget. The state share equaled
3.4 percent of the average state budget.
Ninety percent of the AFDC budget is
spent on benefits, 10 percent on admin-
istrative costs.
COMMENT: The costs of AFDC can be
compared to the roughly $300 billion in
tax dollars received annually by the
Department of Defense and the billions
spent on the savings and loan bailout.
-8-
MYTH: Mandatory programs such as
time limits and workfare are needed to
get the welfare poor to behave properly.
FACT: Mandatoryprogramsdonotwork
very well. Workfare has produced only
modest, if any, increases in employment
and earnings, and mandatory programs
do not have any greater success than
voluntary ones. A recent study of
California's GAIN program found that
workfare participants earned an average
of $271 more per year than non-
participants-while receiving $281 a
year less in welfare. A University of
Wisconsin study found that Learnfare
(the program that docks $200 a month
from a welfare mother's check if her
children miss school without an
acceptable excuse) failed to improve
the school attendance of welfare
children, but did exacerbate preexisting
family problems.
COMMENT: Mandatory programs
imply that the poor will not work,
marry, plan their families, send their
children to school or take them to the
doctor unless the government makes
them do so. Supporters of mandatory
programs are often the same people who
argue that the government should "get
offpeople'sbacks." But, when it comes
to the poor, they support government
telling people what to do and how to
live.
-9-
MYTH: If poor women only married,
they would not be poor.
FACT: Family composition does not
cause poverty. Although two incomes
are clearly better than one, the poor
tend to be poor before, during and after
they tie the knot. The majority of the
poor live in households with workers
employed full year, full time.
COMMENT: Marriage is not an effective
antipoverty strategy for women.
-10-
MYTH: Female-headed households are
responsible for rising poverty rates.
FACT: The percentage of all poor
families that are headed by women has
declined since 1990. Yet at the same
time, the poverty rate for families has
increased from 10.7 percent in 1990 to
11.7 percent in 1992.
COMMENT: Gender does not make
people poor. Rather, the treatment of
women based on gender has contrib-
uted to the impoverishment of women.
Blaming women for rising poverty rates
does, however, mask its real causes.
-11-
MYTH: Those who work are not poor.
FACT: Nearly 7 percent of the workforce,
or 9.2 million workers, remain poor
despite being employed. Almost 60
percent of all poor people live in families
where someone works. Until the mid-
1970s, the minimum wage lifted those
who worked full-time, year-round, out
of poverty. Today, it leaves a three-
person family $3,862 below the poverty
line.
COMMENT: For a large segment of the
population, the promise of the American
dream-that if you work you will not be
poor-has not been kept for the last 15
years.
-12-
MYTH: The poor are freeloaders.
FACT: Five percent of the population
receives AFDC. Forty-seven percent of
the population receives some kind of
direct government benefit such as social
security, Medicare or veterans' benefits.
In addition, the tax code provides
numerous health, education and welfare
benefits to the rich and middle class,
and another set of subsidies to corpora-
tions.
COMMENT: Everyone is on welfare.
Mimi Abramovitz is a professor at
Hunter School ofSociai Work an d author
of Regulating the Lives of Women.
Fred Newdom is a consultant to
community-based organizations and
advocacy groups. This fact sheet was
prepaFed for the Bertha Capen Reynolds
Society, a national organization of pro-
gressive human service workers.
SOURCES:
1. US Dept. of Health and Human Services; US House
Committee on Ways and Means.
2. US House Committee on Ways and Means; Center on
Social Welfare Policy and Low (New York); Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities (Washington, D.C.).
3. US Dept. of Health and Human Services; Institute for
Women's Policy Research (Washington, D.C.).
4. US Dept. of Health and Human Services.
5. US House Committee on Ways and Means.
6. Christopher Jencks and Kathryn Edin, "The Real
Welfare Problem," The American Prospect, Spring 1990;
Institute for Research on Poverty, UniversityofWiscon-
sin.
7. US House Committee on Ways and Means.
8. The New York Times, April 23,1992, p.Al; The New
York Times, January 29, 1990, p. A23; Division of
Outreach and Continuing Education, UniversityofWis-
consin.
9. US House Committee on Ways and Means.
10. Centeron Budget and Policy Priorities (Washington,
D.C.).
11. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Washington,
D.C.).
12. US House Committee on Ways and Means.
CITY UMITSI APRIL 1994/23
Capturing the Debate
By Eva Neubauer
R
ecently, The New York Times
Magazine carried one of the few
feature articles on community
development that the main-
stream press has ever published. Written
by Nicholas Lemann, the article had an
attention-grabbing headline: "The Myth
of Community Development: Rebuild-
ing the Ghetto Doesn't Work. " Unfortu-
nately, this rare opportunity to provide
the public with an honest assessment of
the goals, successes and failures of the
community development movement
was lost. Lemann served only to confuse
the picture by presenting a jumbled mix
of misdirected critique and feeble praise
for locally-based revitalization efforts.
The fact that Lemann' s analysis was
so problematic but nevertheless received
so much attention points to the need for
those of us working in the field to do a
much better job of seizing the debate
and initiating a realistic discussion of
the issues. In order to dispel the myths
about community development and to
lay the groundwork for popular support,
locally-based groups need to communi-
cate information about their work to the
local and national media, researchers,
academics and the political mainstream.
Fundamentally Flawed
Lemann's article leaves the impres-
sion that most community development
initiatives have failed and that the strat-
egy of revitalizing inner-city neighbor-
hoods is fundamentally flawed. Accord-
ing to his assessment, any attempt to
create a stable economic base in
distressed urban areas is hopeless and
government efforts to lure businesses
into low income areas with expensive
public subsidies are senseless.
However, few community develop-
ment groups define their mission solely
in terms of economic development and
the promotion of business in low income
neighborhoods. While some organiza-
tions do, with mixed success, attempt to
shore up the ailing industrial base of
cities and hel p to incubate small
businesses, they do not claim that this
strategy is the panacea for poverty.
Cityview is a forum for opinion
and does not necessarily reflect
the views of City Limits.
24/APRIL 1994/CITY UMITS
Instead, most believe that a range of
strategies must be employed in low
income neighborhoods to rebuild
deteriorated physical structures and to
provide residents with social services,
day care, education and health care.
Lemann does acknowledge that non-
profit, community-based organizations
are very good at some of these things.
New Community Corporation (NCC) in
Newark, New Jersey, for instance, has
produced and manages more than 2,500
units of low income housing, runs six
day care centers and an elementary
school, provides a network of social
services and has part ownership of a
major shopping center that it devel-
oped. All of these efforts have hel ped to
revitalize and repopulate an area devas-
tated by urban rebellion some 25 years
ago. Interestingly enough, Lemann fails
to note that NCC has created more than
1,200 jobs for local residents in the
process. Like many
other community
develop-ment corpo-
rations, NCG's work
clearly demonstrates
the value of enabling
people to take control
of seemingly hopeless
circumstances. At its
best, this kind of com-
prehensive commu-
nity development is a
vehicle for people to
create social change.
Age-Old Tactic
nesses to locate in six designated urban
areas throughout the country. Lemann
quite appropriately points out that the
magnitude of the urban crisis demands
a much more ambitious national policy.
But it is a mistake to conclude that such
an inadequate government program is
evidence of the failure of community
development.
The failure lies in this nation' s
unwillingness to provide the resources
that are truly needed to address poverty.
We are willing to subsidize middle and
upper income homeowners through
federal income tax write offs to the tune
of $30 billion, but Congress could not
even find $1 billion this year to house a
small fraction of the homeless. What is
more, the Empowerment Zones legis-
lation provides a mere $2.5 billion in
wage credits to employers, and less than
$1 billion in grants for social services
and other purposes. This is nowhere
near the $23 billion
that will be provided
for prisons in Presi-
dent Clinton's crime
bill.
Yet Lemann' s
critique undermines
any effort to create
public support for
more effective
policies. When the
mainstream press
z myopically charac-
ffi
Iii terizes community-
~ based groups as
o being inexperienced,
~ incompetent and So how is Lemann
able to argue that
community develop-
ment is a failure? By
employing the age-
old tactic of taking
aim at good ideas,
Eva Neubauer is a program associate at
the Pratt Institute Center for Community
and Environmental Development.
sometimes even
corrupt, the public is
bound to deliver a
misinformed verdict
on the issues.
rather than criticizing
the forces that don't allow those good
ideas to take full root.
Lemann observes that since the 1960s
Democratic and Republican adminis-
trations alike have been guilty of seek-
ing unrealistic quick-fix solutions to the
problems of poverty and urban decay.
As the latest example of misguided
policy, he points to the recent federal
legislation for Empowerment Zones,
which would provide special tax breaks
and other benefits to encourage busi-
The only way for
community develop-
ment groups to appeal this verdict suc-
cessfully is to make sure that their story
is told. It is critical for those working at
the local level to bring what they have
learned to the attention of the broader
public and the political establishment.
Too many well-intentioned people
across the country are throwing up their
hands at the growing crises of
homelessness, unemployment, drug
abuse and violence. Yet community
development groups have come up with
some solutions to these very issues.
In order to get the word out about
these successful models, we need to
document community development
efforts in newsletters and research
reports, develop strong relationships
with reporters and editors in the main-
stream media, send out regular press
releases and find other ways to commu-
nicate the mission, accomplishments
and struggles of the movement. We also
need to let the public kn9w that com-
munity groups alone cannot bring about
the kinds of broader changes that would
eliminate the inequities producing and
perpetuating poverty. Therefore we need
to focus on advocacy and organizing
efforts to pressure those who have
political and economic power into
making these kinds of changes.
During the 1980s we had to learn to
fight conservatives who claimed that
the War on Poverty caused urban
decline. Today we must continue to
fight those who attempt to cast the debate
in terms that set us up to fail. D.
Building Hope, a docul!lentary on
community development produced in
association with the Pratt Institute
Center for Community and Environ-
mental Development, will air nation-
ally on PBS on April 26th at 10 p.m.
Women, Work and Family
in a Changing Economy
With:
Heidi Hartmann
Delores Crockett
F ran Rodgers
Mimi Abramovitz
Susie Johnson
Lourdes Santiago
Guido West
Sheila Wellington
Joyce Miller
K.C. Wagner
Linda Faye Williams
Rosalind Paaswell
Sharon Hoahing
Barbaro Katersky
Sylvia Wagonheim
May Chen
With panels on: sexual harassment, lesbians in the
workplace, immigrant women, welfare reform in the
90s, urban community development, corporate family
policies, women workers and aging, the glass ceiling,
and more ...
Saturday, April 23, 1994
9:30 am. - 6:00 p.m.
Call (212) 854-2067 for information
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CITY UMITSI APRIL 1994/25
Denunciation as Politics
"Tyranny of Kindness: Dismantling the
Welfare System to End Poverty in
America," by Theresa Funiciello,
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993,352 pages,
$22 hardcover.
T
heresa Funiciello begins her
highly personal account of her
organizing experiences at the
Downtown Welfare Advocacy
Center (DWAC) by quoting the group's
unofficial anthem, a song written by
Bev Grant and performed by the Human
Condition: "Together we can move
mountains; alone we can't move at all."
If there is one thing to be said about
Theresa Funiciello, it is that she never
understood the point of the song. Not-
withstanding the inspiration, talent,
charisma and commitment she brought
to this well-known effort to organize
New York City welfare mothers in the
mid-1970s, DWAC flared for a few brief
years and then died out because
Funiciello, having alienated her key
supporters, could no longer garner
sufficient resources for organizing.
Those familiar with our work know
that we are not neutral reviewers. We
worked with DWAC and regularly gave
advice based on our earlier experiences
in the National Welfare Rights Organi-
zation; we opened access to funders; we
made introductions to social agencies;
we organized meetings of activist social
workers to build support; we recruited
college students to work as organizers;
we attended demonstrations and went
to jail as a result.
That this is barely referenced by
Funiciello (except once, and then only
to point out that our presence at a
particular demonstration did not draw
the hoped-for media interest) speaks
directly to the way in which she charac-
terizes the struggle to organize welfare
mothers and her role in that story.
Indeed, her book is principally an
indictment of all those who she believes
failed her, even as she beatifies herself.
She is committed, others are self-serving;
she is courageous, others are cowards.
More generally, this book is about
what she calls "the virtually inevitable
conflict between poor people and those
who make their living off them." The
conflict is between good and evil.
Advocates and providers in the social
services who claim to be kind and caring
are instead hypocrites who suck up the
26/APRIL 1994/CITY UMITS
resources meant for the poor. Social
welfare is thus "a redistribution
scheme ... from poor women and chil-
dren to middle class social welfare pro-
fessionals. "
Paid Mercenaries
As for social welfare staff, they con-
stitute "whole battalions of paid merce-
naries" with no goal other than to "fill
their pockets, advance their power."
They are like "a school of piranhas."
Similarly, foundation directors who
supported DWAC, and who had
financed civil rights and welfare rights
efforts in the 1960s, also fail to meet
Funiciello's expectations and are
condemned for engaging in "crass
manipulation" of poor people. Regard-
ing antipoverty lawyers, she observes it
was "rarely the habit of legal services"
to represent issues from the viewpoint
of clients and many "had little concern
beyond their careers." Politicians, of
course, are all corrupt. In sum, social
welfare advocates and provider organi-
zations make her "skin crawl."
Many readers will find this sort of
moral denunciation appealing and it
does have a measure of truth. There is
altogether too much self-serving mouth-
ing of commitment to the needy, coupled
with high salaries, fancy luncheons and
the like. Funiciello' s solution is to
recommend that advocates and provid-
ers be defunded, and that the money
instead be given directly to the poor.
But to denounce the entire field of
social welfare is to make three large
mistakes. The first is one of political
naivete. Funiciello thinks that social
agencies get funds by hoodwinking the
public into thinking that they serve the
poor; she assumes that if the infra-
structure were wiped out, the money
would wind up in the hands of the poor.
Second, Funiciello is wildly indis-
criminate in her characterization of
advocates and providers. The legal
service attorneys who choose careers
defending poor clients rather than
corporate clients (and who have been
the main source of resistance to making
the welfare system even more restric-
tive and punitive than it is) are lumped
in with the doyens of the old-line social
welfare federations, who often do indeed
posture too much and lunch too much.
Third, having condemned so many
groups and individuals as villains,
By Richard A. Cloward
and Frances Fox Piven
Funiciello is left without any allies. Or
rather, the poor for whom she claims to
speak are left without any allies. It is a
morally flawed approach. Consider
Funiciello's treatment of then-City
Council member Ruth Messinger, who
was by any measure one of her most
loyal supporters. Privately, Messinger
took Funiciello and her daughter into
her home for a year and a half while they
were getting settled in New York City,
although there is no mention of that in
the book. Funiciello does acknowledge
Messinger's public role: "DWAC
supplied the recipients and issues, and
Ruth accessed officials, to some extent
the press, and significant others."
Betrayal
What Messinger got for her trouble
was betrayal. In 1980 she induced
Stanley Brezenoff, then head of the
Human Resources Administration, to
meet with key DWAC representatives
in a City Council room reserved for
private discussions. Once she and
Brezenoff arrived, the meeting was
disrupted by 150 welfare recipients who
had been in hiding nearby. Funiciello
writes that she later told Messinger "that
it had been in her own best interest not
to have known about" the planned
disruption. Messinger saw it differently;
she had used a good deal of political
capital to arrange the meeting and she
told us it took more than a year to repair
the damage to her relation-ships.
Funiciello says Messinger never forgave
her, which is true. Nor did we, and
others, forgive her for similar betrayals.
Every organizer knows that protest
movements live off the land. But as one
person or organization after another
failed to meet Funiciello's demands and
expectations, she led her band of
followers in a scorched earth retreat.
Later, when she began publishing the
attacks on social workers, legal aid
attorneys, foundation members and
others which culminated in this book,
we speculated that her unrestrained
anger directed at the social welfare field
could make her the darling of the Right.
That may yet happen. 0
Richard Cloward teaches at the
Columbia University School of Social
Work. Frances Fox Piven is a distin-
guished professor at the Graduate
School and University Center, CUNY.
Bittersweet
I want to thank you for several years of
valuable reading about housing and
community issues in New York City.
You've kept me informed and learning
and in touch with the local struggles and
issues. I've been in Syracuse now for five
years and it's not possible anymore for me
to keep up with the battles in NYC, so I'm
letting my subscription lapse.
Keep up the good work. It will be needed
now more than ever with th/'l tightening
economy and the changing political
administrations. I'm enclosing a check as
a token and modest contribution to your
work.
Arthur Paris
Syracuse
Stay Put
You cite in your article ("Locking
Horns," Briefs, February 1994) that Asian
Americans For Equality was selected as
the nonprofit developerfor Round 6 of the
Low Income Housing Tax Credit program
through the city's Department of Housing
Preservation and Development (HPD) and
the Enterprise Foundation. What you
neglected to mention is that Lydia Tom,
the former associate director of AAFE, is
now employed by Enterprise and partici-
pated in making the final determination
on awarding funding to AAFE.
Bill Frey states, "We don't want to go
into communities and create controversy,"
but that is exactly what Enterprise has
done. A similar situation occurred in
Round 3 of the program in 1990 between
Pueblo Nuevo and AAFE. The end result:
Pueblo Nuevo was awarded four of six
buildings, with AAFE getting the remain-
ing two. It would seem that a pattern is
developing.
The housing director of AAFE, David
Sobel, states in the article that "AAFE's
opponents are motivated by self-interest."
On the contrary, AAFE's opponents are
appalled by the Enterprise Foundation's
attempt to create a racial incident that is
going to have a lasting impact for years to
come. The cost will probably be the end of
any new tax credit projects in the Lower
East Side. What needs to be further exam-
ined is why the Enterprise Foundation
would knowingly set up such a situation
a second time.
You report that Mr. Sobel takes umbrage
at the suggestion that Latino groups should
get priority to develop housing in Latino
communities. "We do not build Asian
housing," he says. The issue is not whether
Latino non profits should get priority to
develop affordable housing in Latino
communities, but whether a nonprofit
should develop housing outside its service
area in contradiction of its city and state
contracts which designate them to a
particular geographical area.
Roberto Caballero
Executive Director
Pueblo Nuevo
Sensitivity Solution
While I am not in a position to com-
ment on the selection criteria that awarded
Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE)
funding to develop low income housing
in Loisaida, I do feel your article failed to
address a concern that goes to the heart of
what it means to be a community-based
organization.
By focusing on a target population,
community-based organizations (CBOs)
with perennially limited resources are
better equipped to have an impact and
avoid duplication of efforts. As commu-
nity needs change or become greater, CBOs
have a responsibility to revisit their service
area in consultation with the community
to determine if services should be re-
focused or expanded. Such consultation
invariably includes other CBOs. Yet the
leadership of AAFE has failed to do this in
the past and, as the present situation indi-
cates, is no more sensitive to this open
process now.
If Loisaida is now included in AAFE's
service area, why were local CBOs not
aware of this before AAFE made its pro-
posal for the East 4th Street site? It is
reductionist to characterize the present
conflict as a simple turf battle. There are
elemental issues of openness and honesty
involved and AAFE comes up short on
both counts. In the rush to develop
housing, if the community is not part of
the process, it is little more than a land
grab, regardless of who ultimately benefits.
Donna Ellaby
Executive Director
Good Old Lower East Side
Open Up
While we would welcome the rehabili-
tation of 241 East 2nd Street, we do not
believe that any agency should have the
right to acquire a city-owned building
without allowing the residents of the block
to participate in the process. Asian Ameri-
Your Neighborhood Housing
Insurance Specialist
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CITY UMITSI APRIL 1994/27
cans for Equality has never requested a
meeting with any of us to discuss their
development of 241 East 2nd Street. We
believe that the organization should
present its plan for the building to our
members for their input.
Teri Hagan
President, 239 East 2nd Street HDFC
Secretary, Second Street B &- C Block
Association.
Consolidate or Die
"Locking Horns" raised some interest-
ing issues concerning nonprofit housing
development on the Lower East Side.
Unfortunately, it does not address the
major structural issue that influences the
arena oflow and moderate housing devel-
opers in the area: dwindling potential
market.
The real issue is that the growth of
housing development agencies on the
Lower East Side has been driven by a
series of forces, not least of which has
been the availability of city-owned prop-
erties. To date, most of the properties in
the development schema have been either
occupied or vacant, squatter-free
buildings. As the number of such
properties declines, so do the resources
available. Too many nonprofit hOUSing
developers + too few resources = conflict.
Simple equation. Not so simple a solution.
As the battle thickens and the competition
becomes fiercer, the issues of catchment
area, preferential treatment of certain
ethnic groups, and insider trading (as
alleged with the Enterprise project), will
be raised all the more frequently. The
existence of many of the housing
organizations in the neighborhood will be
threatened in the very near future.
To head off all the allegations regard-
ing this particular project, Enterprise
should make their selection process
public. They should address the issue of
shrinking market share by encouraging
joint ventures between existing housing
organizations. Such ventures could
potentially serve as the first step in the
merger/consolidation of housing organ-
izations that, given the shrinking low-
income housing development market in
the neighborhood, will have difficulty
standing alone in the future. Such con-
solidation would result in economies of
scale and would ultimately serve the low
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28/APRlL 1994/CITY UMITS
income community better.
Matthew D. Lovick
Executive Director
People's Mutual Housing Association
Queens West Booster
While I understand that the Queens
West project was not one that City Limits
["Juggernaut" February 1994] would typi-
cally embrace, I assumed a professional
journalistic, open-minded approach. I
presumed too much. You chose to feature
outdated and increasingly marginal views.
First as to the facts, to correct just a few:
We're creating 19.5 acres of park for 19
buildings, not seven acres as you reported.
Strangely, you omitted our first construc-
tion priority, a park running west from
Vernon Boulevard to the project. This will
bring basketball and handball courts, play-
grounds, green space and trees to this
underserved community. Waterfront and
community parks may not be important to
City Limits, but they certainly are to the
neighborhood and Queens West.
Since the article took great pains to
stress that Community Board 2 opposed
the plan in 1990, I was surprised that
equal effort wasn't made to point out that
since then the community board has
reviewed its position and has been very
supportive. Since your reporter, Barbara
Fedders, did not know at the time of our
conversation which community board had
jurisdiction over Queens West, I am not
surprised that she's not up to date. Our
local support goes way beyond what's
reflected in the article. The Long Island
City Business Development Corporation
supports our efforts, as does every elected
local official and the majority of the Queens
West Task Force, a coalition of commu-
nity representatives organized by the
Queens Borough President.
As a journal proud of its "grassroots"
orientation, the authenticity of commu-
nity spokespeople should be an overriding
concern in your reportage. Of the two
quoted, Ms. Stoewsand is a consultant,
based in Manhattan; we understand that
"coalition" leader Debra Whitelaw
currently resides in Manhattan. The
number of folks her "coalition" speaks for
in the community is unclear and ever
diminishing, but despite this they were
invited to join the Queens West TaskForce.
The most curious aspect of the
"coalition's" roots is the authenticity of its
"community-based" planning. The
"alternative plan" was developed in
relative isolation and only recently (three
years after the Uniform Land Use Review
Procedure) sprung on the community and
Queens West. Equally isolated is the one
"professional planner" Ms. Fedders calls
on to critique our first housing develop-
ment. Elliott Sclar's concerns regarding
the affordability of the 550 co-op units in
our first building can only be very super-
ficial since, to the best of my knowledge,
he has spoken to no one from Queens West
or the conditionally designated developer.
Concerns regarding job loss are also
outdated. The only active permanent jobs
on the site are at the Pepsi Cola bottling
plant. The city has been discussing reloca-
tion of the bottling plant to an industrial
park in Queens, so no jobs will be lost as
a result of development. Indeed Queens
West projects that 14,000 temporary and
10,000 permanent jobs will be generated
as a result of construction.
While I fully recognize that legitimate
public policy and planning issues are
raised by projects the size of ours, I can
only lament that you've missed the oppor-
tunity to accurately inform your readers
and engage in fruitful discourse.
Rosina Abramson
President
Queens West Development Corporation
Barbara Fedders replies: Regarding the park:
Rosina Abramson's own press materials
indicate Queens West is creating seven
acres of park land. In her letter, she is
including the 12.5-acre waterfront
esplanade that I mentioned separately in
the article.
Queens Community Board 2 Chair
Joseph Conley states emphatically that
the board is opposed to Queens West. If
Abramson is operating under the assump-
tion of community board support, she
should contact Conley. At the time of our
interview, Abramson herself told me the
development was in the district of Com-
munity Board 1. Only later did she have
her secretary leave messages for me and
send a fax to correct herself.
Regarding local support for the project,
the Queens West Task Force was orga-
nized by Queens Borough President
Claire Shulman, an early and ardent
supporter of the project. It is hardly a
forum for dissenting voices or open
discussion, as evidenced by the dismiss-
ive quote from Shulman's spokesperson
in the article. In fact, according to members
ofthe Hunters Point Community Coalition,
the task force's repeated scheduling
problems delayed the presentation of the
coalition's alternative plan. However: as
early as the spring of1992, City Limits was
aware of regular coalition outreach
sessions presenting early versions of the
alternative plan to community residents
and associations, where they invited
interested parties to take part in its devel-
opment. Members of the group say they
began mustering community support for
their project in 1990, and that more than
500 local residents have been given the
opportunity to take part.
As far as the authenticity of the
grassroots opposition goes, Stoewsand is
a consultant to the coalition and lives in
Manhattan. Whitelaw recently married
someone who lives in Manhattan but tells
me she still keeps her residence in Hunters
Point. She is listed in the phone book in
Hunters Point. Abramson, incidentally,
does not live in the community. And she
conveniently ignores the other residents I
quoted who oppose Queens West.
As for Columbia University professor
Elliott Sclar's analysis of the cost of the
cooperative apartments, it differs only
slightly from Abramson's own estimate
and one published in The New York Times
last November, which pegged monthly
fees at around $1,400. In addition, the tax
abatement will expire in 20 years, driving
maintenance fees considerably higher. In
the article, Sclar makes the simple obser-
vation that the cost of buying one of these
co-ops is at best comparable to the cost of
purchasing a house in the suburbs or a
co-op in Manhattan. His point is that to be
competitive, Queens West needs to be less
expensive. Otherwise it is a boondoggle.
Concerns about job loss are certainly
not outdated. I spoke to a contracting
company already making plans to relocate.
Queens West's own En vironmen tal 1m pact
Statement admits job loss.
The condescending tone of Abramson's
letter is indicative of the developer's
attitude to all who criticize the plan.
There clearly remain many valid and
unanswered questions about both the long-
term stability of the project and Queens
West officials' evident disdain for
community residents' opinions. Never-
theless, construction will begin soon,
thanks to the relentless boosterism of
Abramson and the state and local govern-
ments.
Destroying Hunters Point?
Your reporter is correct when she states
that the Hunters Point Community Devel-
opment Corporation (HPCDC) supports
the Queens West project. Support does
not mean submission. Governor Cuomo
had his chief of planning defend the hard
and fast position of the Queens West De-
velopment Corporation that no one should
object to being screwed in the name of
progress. It appears that in an election
year it is easier to opt for the genocide of a
neighborhood than offend big banking and
union interests.
We have offered the following sugges-
tions concerning modification of the means
to achieve economic development in
Hunters Point: 1) Stop the construction
planned for Queens West in an unused
Long Island Railroad cut until the local
community plan for a parking facility is
properly reviewed. It would anchor the
shopping district revitalization. 2) Freeze
the rezoning until that rezoning benefits
the entire community. 3) Stop attempts to
steal our bus stops for industrial loading
zones. 4) Stop the 500-car parking lot for a
ferry to Manhattan. Hunters Point is
already rush-hour gridlocked.
Big government and bigger business
will destroy Hunters Point unless groups
such as HPCDC and the many splinter
factions unite. While supporting economic
development in our community, we fight
the program of small communi ty genocide
which is currently our lot.
Thomas Sobczak
Executive Director
Hunters Point Community
Development Corp.
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CITY UMITS/APRIL 1994/29
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230 Flatbush Avenue
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718/857 -0468
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Certified Public Accountant
271 Madison Avenue, Suite 908, New York, New York 10016
(212) 354 1770
Financial Audits Compilation and Review Services
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(212) 682-8981
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PO Box 265 Huntington Station, NY 11746
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JOB ADS
PROJECT COOROINATOR. Private/public partnership to increase capacity of
CBOs through federal grant applications. Requirements: experience in NYC
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$40-$50k. Resumes, cover letter and writing sample to G. King, Chemical
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SERVICE COORDINATOR/PROGRAM DEVELOPER. Full time, experienced person
needed to coordinate and facilitate the provision of social services to tenants
in newly opened 68-unit building in the Morrisania section of the Bronx.
Responsibilities: Under the supervision of the Executive Director, the Service
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association, serve as liaison and facilitator for tenant and community educa-
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Corp. 1199 Fulton Avenue, Suite 1 B, Bronx, NY 10456. Affirmative Action
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STAFF AnORNEY, TEMPORARY. The East Side SRO Legal Services Project
seeks an attorney with two years litigation experience or one year housing
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HOUSING POLICY COORDINATOR. The Affordable Housing Network of NJ seeks a
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CITY UMITS/ APRIL 1994/31
ership
You Can
Count
I
n the South Bronx, 265 units of affordable housing are financed ...
On Staten Island, hOUSing and child care are provided at a transitional
facility for homeless families ... ln Brooklyn, a young, moderate-income
couple is approved for a Neighborhood Homebuyers Mortgage
SM
on their first home ...
In Harlem, the oldest minority-owned flower shop has an opportunity to do business
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In addition, we make contributions to
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Ex eel more from us.

Community Development Group
C , 993 Chemical Banking Corporation