City Limits Magazine, November 1990 Issue

November 1990 New York's Community Affairs News Magazine
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Volume XV Number 9
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COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY RICKY FLORES.
2/NOVEMBER 1990/CITY UMITS
Poverty Pulpit
C
hances are you missed the announcement: there certainly wasn't
much fanfare coming from the White House. Back in September,
President George Bush named Jack Kemp the nation's poverty
czar. Kemp, the Secretary of the Department of Housing and
Urban Development, will now also head the president's newly created
Economic Empowerment Task Force.
At first blush this doesn't seem to amount to much. After all , poverty
issues don't appear to be high on the Bush agenda. It was only a few
months ago that the White House's Domestic Policy Council, under
which the Kemp task force will operate, recommended that the nation's
current poverty programs remain unaltered.
But times are changing. Bush may need to put poverty on his agenda
for a variety of reasons. First of all, Bush's image as a leader who can
handle the nation's domestic ills is now in budget-inspired shambles.
Secondly, Kemp is a darling ofthe Republican right, which is furious
at the president. Thirdly-and perhaps most importantly-Kemp is
passionate about the issue of fighting poverty. The new task force will
become his in-house pulpit.
It certainly could be argued that getting anti-poverty measures back
on the national agenda is welcome. But with Kemp spearheading the
call, it comes with some heavy ideological baggage.
To Kemp, a war on poverty means a familiar nostrum of conservative
remedies: capital gains tax cuts, higher personal tax exemptions,
enterprise zones (boasting further tax breaks), tenant buyouts of public
housing and vouchers for housing and education. Kemp says this is the
way to fight welfare dependency and empower the poor. Nowhere, of
course, does he talk about redressing the damage of Reaganomics,
which made the rich fabulously richer and the poor ever poorer. (This
is no liberal myth-report after report, including a recent study by the
Internal Revenue Service, documents the fact.)
For women like Gwendolyn Smith, who City Limits associate editor
Lisa Glazer profiles in this issue, Kemp's anti-poverty approach offers
little help. Smith valiantly struggles to house, feed and clothe her
family on less than $600 a month in a neighborhood racked by drugs
and violence. (Careful readers will recognize Smith and her family-
Glazer wrote about them nine months ago in "Mixed Blessings: Life
After the Welfare Hotels.")
As Ron Shiffman writes inside, we need a program that encompasses
a comprehensive community-based approach to uprooting poverty.
This effort requires at its core a commitment to fighting social and
economic injustice-and substantial investment by the public and
private sectors. For most of the nation's poor, Kemp's proposals are
small change.
* * *
City Limits is proud to announce that the Community Service
Society of New York has joined as a sponsor of the publication. We
thank them for their support. 0
FEATURES
Uprooting Poverty
Through Community Development 8
It's time to return to a comprehensive and integrated
approach to neighborhood change.
One Mother's Story 12
The Smiths live on the second floor, the drug dealers
operate from the third floor and the landlord is the City
of New York.
The Planning Man 20
New planning commission chairman Richard Schaffer
is planning to plan-but when will he start?
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial ........................................................................ 2
Briefs
Sludge Strategy ......... ..... .. ... ........ ..... ........ ....... .............. 4
Capital Cuts .................................................................. 4
Legislative Report Card ...................... ................ .......... 5
Profile
Turning Anger Into Action .......................................... 6
Pipeline
Day-Care Disgrace ...................................................... 17
CityView
Beware the Senator's Trojan Rent Bill ...................... 24
Book Review
Of Black and White and Left and Right .................... 25
Poverty/Page 8
Mother/Page 12
Planning/Page 20
CITY UMnS/NOVEMBER 1990/3
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SLUDGE STRATEGY
The city's environmental
department is propasing a new
plan for sludge disposal that
could turn New York City sludge
into fertilizer, fertilizer pellets
and compast. Local environmen-
talists support converting the
waste material into a prOductive
resource but say the plan could
be dangerous unless the city
acts forcefully to remove harmful
chemicals from the city's
sewage.
"New York City's best efforts
to manage sludge on land won't
work very well and be the best
federal legislation mandates the
development of alternative
methods for sludge dispasal by
1991 . The ocean dumping ban
was passed two years ago after
medical waste and garbage
lapped up on the shores of
beaches along the East Coast.
The city's first step for sludge
management calls merely for
removing excess water from the
waste. After that, the city is
considering plans to use the
solid sludge as a material for
landfill or a product for
fertilizer, fertilizer pellets or
com past. In the immediate
future, the city will pay busi-
From sea to land: National legislation banned ocean dumping of sludge.
turning sludge into compost and fertilizer pellets.
plans in terms of the environ-
ment and public health if they
don't remove harmful pollut-
ants," says Sarah Clarke, staff
scientist at the Environmental
Defense Fund (EDF) and head of
a citizens advisory committee on
sludge.
Sludge is the material that
remains after sewage is treated
and released into waterways.
Most of New York City com-
bines the collection of industrial
and residential waste in one
sewerage system; because of
this, the city's sewage and
sludge includes varying levels of
metals such as cadmium and
lead.
The sludge that is culled from
sewage is currently dumped
106 miles offshore in the
Atlantic ocean. However,
4j NOVEMBER 1990j CITY UMITS
nesses to manage and market
the city's sludge, but by the end
of the decade, the city plans to
do this work itself. One of the
vendors that is competing for
the city's business proposes to
spread New York City' s sludge
on agricultural land in Okla-
homa.
The projected cost for the
initial construction, exponsion,
equipment and barging facilities
that would be addeCl to eight
existing sewage treatment
facilities would be $600 million,
according to the city's Depart-
ment of Environmental Protec-
tion (DEP) .
Across the country, most
cities are depositing sludge in
landfills, according to Clarke
from EDF. However, as landfill
space is used up, a number of
cities are starting to turn sludge
into fertilizer or compost.
Generally speaking, Clarke
supports this use of sludge, but
notes, "There' s been a patch-
work of success. Everyone's
had problems. No city has
initiated a program without
stumbling blocks."
Federal safetx standards for
the conversion of sludge are
currently being finalized and
are expected to be distributed
by October, 1991.
Martha Holstein, a spokes-
person for the Department of
Environmental Protection, says
that once federal guidelines are
Now the city is considering
in place, the city will strive to
meet them. ''We are are
committed to doing everything
we have to do to meet the
standards for land application
of sludge," she says.
Holstein adds that the city's
plan is more environmentally
sound than other alternatives
such as incineration. ''We
are not going to bury it or
throw it Clown a mine shaft,"
she notes.
Eric Goldstein from the
Natural Resources Defense
Council says the plan is Rawed
because it does not treat
industrial pallutants at their
source. He and other environ-
mentalists say the plan could
be improved by expanding
the city' s programs to stop
industries from allowing harmful
chemicals into the sewerage
system.
Holstein concedes, ''We can
always do better with regard to
pre-treatment and though
funding is always a problem,
we have through enforcement
brought down metal content in
our sewage."
Meeting deadlines and
scrutiny from environmentalists
are just the first of many hurdles
the city's plan must overcome.
Community opposition has
already bequn in Staten Island,
where residents of Port
Richmond are fearful of the
possible odors and emissions
from a thermal drying facility
where the sludge could be made
into fertilizer pellets. They are
also protesting because the plan
would. displace a boat yard and
a manna.
Other sewage treatment
plants slated for expansion into
sludge management sites are
Wards Island, Hunts Point,
Bowery Bay, Tallman Island,
Coney Island-Rockaway, Red
Hook and Jamaica. According
to the environmental impact
statement prepared by the DEP,
all these areas would experi-
ence a rise in air and noise
pollution as well as traffic
congestion from increased
trucking. 0 Erika Mallin
CAPITAL CUTS
Six months ago the Dinkins
administration announced plans
for growth and change within
the housing department' s capital
budget. Now the administration
is asking the housing depart-
ment and other agencies to cut
capital budget expenses by
15.8 percent.
The Department of Housing
Preservation and Development's
(HPD) 10-year, $5. 1 billion
housing plan is financed entirely
by the capital budget, which
comes from band revenue.
''We put out targets and
the agency has to give us a
plan to meet the targets,"
explains Lee Jones, a spokes-
person for Mayor David
Dinkins. The mayor will
consider the agency' s sugges-
tions and present a final plan to
City Council by December 15.
Roz Post, a spakesperson
for HPD, says the agency is still
~
putting together a list of
suggestions for cuts. She could
not list specific programs that
may be eliminated or reduced.
Last May, Mayor David
Dinkins and Felice Michetti, the
new HPD commissioner,
announced plans to redirect
housing subsidies so more
apartments would be available
to low and moderate income
New Yorkers. They also
announced a program to create
3,000 apartments for homeless
single New Yorkers.
Housing advocates who
welcomed the policy shift are
now wary that the capital
budget reductions will cancel
out such programs. Harry
DeRienzo, executive director of
the Consumer-Farmer Founda-
tion, which funds low income
housing, soys, "[Former Mayor)
Koch soid the city should use
bond money to create housing
and apply that money to people
who can pay it back. We say
use those public dollars to help
those that are the most vulner-
able. I think Commissioner
Michetti has the same view, but
there's going to be tremendous
pressure to go bock to the Koch
policy."
Housing programs most at
risk may be those that have
yet to i?egin producing units.
One of tnese is the Small
Building Low Income program,
which is slated to produce
10,000 units of low income
housing over the next few years.
o UuGlazer
Hometown action: Tenants demonstrated outside City Hall recently demanding that Mayor Dinkins include
them in his "gorgeous mosaic." They called for a rent freeze and better enforcement of the housing code.
Organized by the Housing Justice Campaign, Metropolitan Council on Housing and the New York State
Tenant and Neighborhood Coalition, the action was part of a week of Housing Now! protests across the
country that aimed to focus attention on the need for affordable housing.
LEGISLATIVE
REPORT CARD
The vast majority of New
York City's congressional
representatives received high
marks for their voting record on
housing issues from the National
Housing Institute.
Eleven of the city's 14 repre-
sentatives received an A+
grade. Two politicians-Rep.
Thomas Manton and Rep. James
Scheuer-received an A. Rep.
Bill Green was at the bottom of
the city' s delegation with a B-.
The New York state congres-
sional delegation received a B
grade for their combined voting
record on housing issues. The
highest grade for state congres-
sional voting went to Massachu-
setts, with South Dakota and
West Virginia close behind.
New York's delegation ranked
fourth, tied with Maine and
Connecticut.
The National Housing
Institute (NHI) marked the
politicians by studying their
votes on 20 key votes over the
past decade, including "pro-
housing" bills such as the
McKinney Homeless Assistance
bill of 1987 and "anti-housing"
bills such as the Wylie Reducing
Housing Authorization Amend-
ment of 1987.
In lOGOs
13
12
NYC Homeless Family Count
(in Shelter System)
12,615
11,180*
Of the current 433 House
members, 385 members
recorded 1 0 or more votes on
housing and were included in
the survey. Seventy-seven
representatives received an A+
grade and 132 representatives
received an F grade. Senate
members were not included in
the report card because NHI
concluded there were not
enough significant housing votes
and amendments over the last
decade to rate.
The following are the
individual grades for New
York' s congressional represen-
tatives: Rep. Floyd Flake, A+;
Rep. Gary Ackerman, A+; Rep.
James Scheuer, A; Rep. Thomas
Manton, A; Rep. Charles
Schumer, A+; Rep. Edolphus
Towns, A+; Rep. Maior Owens,
A+: Rep. Stephen Solarz, A+;
Rep. Susan Molinari, A+; Rep.
Bill Green, B-; Rep. Charles
Rangel, A+; Rep. Ted Weiss,
A+; Rep. Jose Serrano, A+;
Rep. Eliot Engle,A+.
11
10
9
8
7
8
5
4
3
2
1
0
o October 2,1989
~ October 1, 1990
5,755
Tot.IPe..-.1to
-..
Total' ....... I ..
~ S I o e I t H
* Includes adults in special resi dences
Total
--
Source: NYC Human Resources Administration
Founded in 1982, the
National Housing Institute is a
nonprofit policy and educa-
tional organization. 0 Usa
Glazer
CITY UMITS/NOVEMBER 1990/ 5
lIii""" III
By Robert Hirschfield
Turning Anger Into Action
Homeless people with AIDS are demanding
decent services and housing.
O
n a Wednesday morning, a
group of homeless people
with AIDS are holding their
weekly meeting in the mid-
town offices of the Coalition for the
Homeless. Roberto, a middle-aged
man, describes his experiences in
the shelter system. "I got blackballed
from shelters because I had AIDS,"
he says. "At the Bellevue Shelter I
saw institutional aides refuse to help
people with AIDS get something to
eat because they didn't want to touch
them." As Roberto tells his story, he
becomes increasingly agitated-and
angry.
Formed last year, Anger Into Di-
rect Action-AIDA-turns the fury
and frustration of homeless people
with AIDS into a force for change.
Members of the organization, all of
them homeless or formerl y homeless
with AIDS or AIDS-related complex
(ARC), have lobbied in New York
City, Albany, San Francisco and
Washington, DC, demanding im-
proved services and housing options.
Along the way, the group has also
become a surrogate family for mem-
bers who have been rejected by their
own relatives.
One of the group's founders is
Phyllis Sharpe, a mother of six who
lived at the Prince George Hotel be-
fore doubling up with her family in
6/NOVEMBER 1990/CITY UMRS
Brooklyn. Sharpe was one of four
AIDA members who attended and
protested at the Sixth International
AIDS Conference, which was held
this summer in San Francisco. "Being
an activist, I feel great about myself,"
she says. "They take away your dig-
nity when you're homeless. It's im-
portant to take it back."
AIDA is unique because it is an
advocacy group by and for homeless
people with AIDS. "Let me tell you,
this disease is affecting the under-
class, people on the streets, people
as down and out as you can get," says
Leah Mason, director of the AIDS
day-treatment program at the the
Village Nursing Home. "As far as I
know AIDA is the only group that is
speaking for that group directly. And
that's amazing." She adds, "These
guys , who really have their ups and
downs, spent days on the street at
the San Francisco conference, they
go to City Hall, to public hearings.
They're hard-working activists."
Moved t o Tears
Robert D. Peterson, a policy asso-
ciate with the Gay Men's Health Crisis
who has worked with numerous
grassroots AIDS groups, says he re-
cently attended a City Council meet-
ing where two council members were
moved to tears when AIDA members
testified. After the hearing, he says,
the council members scheduled a
meeting to try and make changes to
the city's shelter proposal. "Any
group that acts out and shakes up the
people that are not fulfilling their
obligations is desperately needed,"
says Peterson.
AIDA members started holding
public officials accountable for poor
health policies as soon as they were
formed. First, Sharpe wrote a "nice
nasty letter" to Anita Vitale, director
of the Division of AIDS Services
(DAS), complaining about policies
that denied benefits to some people
with AIDS because they weren't sick
enough or didn't have a permanent
address. Next, the group held a
demonstration against DAS, which
is part of the Human Resources
Administration (HRA). Shortly af-
terwards, the city announced plans
to expand services and personnel at
DAS, according to Charles King, a
lawyer from the Coalition for the
Homeless who provided the impetus
for the formation of the group.
Housing, of course, is one of
AIDA's prime concerns. The hous-
ing needs of people with AIDS and
people with ARC vary greatly. AIDA
maintains that adequate public fund-
ing must be provided for those who
are independent and semi-independ-
ent and in need of medical and social
services on the premises.
The Dinkins administration has
announced plans to house 625 people
with AIDS whose symptoms are not
severe in shelters, and 2,100 others
whose symptoms are severe in hotels
and apartment houses. This goes a
step beyond the plan put forward by
the city last January to place people
with AIDS in separate rooms within
the city shelter system.
Key issues for the group are access
to new AIDS drugs and the creation
of alternative housing possibilities.
Outside the headquarters of the Na-
tional Institute of Health in Wash-
ington, DC, group members de-
manded that the institute end its
practice of testing new AIDS drugs
on middle and upper class white
males to the exclusion of women,
chil dren, IV drug users and people of
color. And last summer, AIDA lob-
bied in Albany in support of legisla-
tion to fund group homes for people
with AIDS and people with ARC.
"We described to them what it was
like [living in shelters]," Sharpe says.
"Just think- if you have AIDS, and
)
you're trying to be drug free, and
you're living in a shelter where ev-
eryone around you is doing drugs-
what chance have you got?"
On the MAP
Besides lobbying, outreach is an
important part of the group's work.
Many newly diagnosed people with
AIDS know nothing of the benefits
they are entitled to. AIDA members
tell these people how to get on to the
Medical Assistance Program (MAP),
which provides single people who
are eligible with a $480 rent allot-
ment, much more than the usual $215
provided by welfare.
The sticky point is eligibility. "To
get MAP," says Denise Walker, an-
other AIDA member, "your T-cells
[or resistance cells] have to be below
200, or you have to have an oppor-
tunistic host disease like Pneumocys-
tis Pneumonia, or Karposi's Sarcoma.
You can have AIDS, and your T -cells
can be over 200. You should be
eligible for MAP just by having
AIDS."
Walker has had AIDS for three
years. She is married to a man with
AIDS, and would like to move out of
her single-room-occupancy hotel so
she can adopt children with AIDS.
She is a tall, gaunt woman whose
nearness to death makes her impa-
tient for change. When Roberto de-
scribes himself as a patient man,
Walker retorts, "You don't have time
to be patient. "
AIDA is an organization with no
time and little patience with circui-
tous dialogue. In July, the group met
with HRA head Barbara Sabol. She
asked her visitors how the system
could be improved, and was told
that if she really wanted to know the
answer, she should go through the
system herself.
This blunt urgency is echoed in a
recent flyer distributed by the or-
ganization. It sums up AIDA's goals
succinctly: "We refuse to be victim-
ized any longer by the institutions
that are supposed to help us survive.
We demand to lead our lives with
dignity NOW." 0
Robert Hirschfield is a freelance
writer living in New York.
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CITY UMITS/NOVEMBER 1990/7
Uprooting Poverty
Through Community Development
It's time to rethink our notions about
the role of community development in ending poverty.
BY RON SHIFFMAN
"In using the metaphor of uprooting poverty we wish
to emphasize the need for radical action ... We use the
metaphor because it suggests a paradigm of growth
rather than of engineering. Whilst it is helpful and
encouraging to think of rebuilding or reconstructing ... we
believe it is important not to lose sight of the extent to
which society is an organism that grows rather than a
structure than can be dismantled and reassembled like
eradicate poverty. There's another aspect as
well-the notion of uprooting some of our
ideas and thinking on these issues. As com-
munity development has grown over the past
25 years into an institutionalized profession
with particular areas of specialization, the
idea of a comprehensive, integrative approach
to rebuilding and empowering our low in-
come neighborhoods has suffered.
Early Ambitions
Launched in the 1960s, the War on Poverty
was one of the most ambitious initiatives
designed to address poverty in the United
States. Fueled by the civil rights movement
and a federal budget surplus, the Kennedy
and Johnson administrations began to de-
velop major policy initiatives to eradicate
poverty. The programs focused on commu-
nity development as a means to bring about
social , economic and physical revitalization
a motorcar engine. Strategies against poverty involve
not only pulling up the roots of processes that impov-
erish people but also planting (and nurturing) those
seeds that will produce good fruit. "-Francis Wilson
and Mamphela Ramphele, "Uprooting Poverty: The
South African Challenge."
of poor neighborhoods.
A
bout this time last year, I was in South Africa
to assess the prospects of launching a commu-
nity-controlled, community-based economic
development initiative that would be inde-
pendent of the apartheid government. While
there are many differences between South
Africa and the United States, the sharp contrasts be-
tween black and white, between the business districts
and the townships and between wealth and poverty
were painfully familiar to me.
A comparison between the two countries is not really
accurate because overt racism is the law in South Africa
but outlawed here. Still, the reality is that racism and
economic injustice has had and continues to have a
dramatic impact on our nation's communities and the
opportunities that are available for poor and minority
residents.
Following my trip to South Africa, I became increas-
ingly aware of the economic vitality of some parts of
New York as compared to the neglect and devastation in
other sections ofthe city. When I think of the differences
between the Upper East Side of Manhattan and East New
York, Brooklyn, I see a reflection of South Africa's
apartheid cities-and our own need to struggle against
racism and inequality and to overcome economic injus-
tice by uprooting poverty.
The notion of uprooting poverty captures the connec-
tion between community development and strategies to
These initiatives were a response to the
growing awareness of poverty and the recognition that
the slum clearance projects of the 1950s and the urban
renewal initiatives ofthe early 1960s had, in many cases,
exacerbated the problems of poverty rather than in-
creased opportunities for poor people in the United
States.
Experience gained from urban renewal efforts, the
Marshall Plan in Europe, United Nations initiatives in
developing countries and the Gray Areas program of the
Ford Foundation, which merged the idea of physical
revitalization with neighborhood organizing, helped
shape the concept of community development then
prevalent in the United States. It was more than just
physical revitalization. Community development meant
a community's economic and social revitalization and
cultural growth as well. Arguing that poor communities
have the resources and the will to address their own
problems, community development proponents called
for full participation of the poor along with that of gov-
ernment.
Successful community development, as envisioned
then, was based on the idea of empowerment and recog-
nized all of a community's needs. It sought to develop
opportunities for personal, group and community growth.
"The conception was that being poor is not an indi-
vidual affair but rather a systematic disease that afflicts
whole communities," Stewart Perry is quoted in Neil R.
Pierce and F. Carol Steinbach's book, "Corrective Capi-
talism." "Deterio-
rated housing,
impaired health,
nonexistent or low
wages, the welfare
assault on self re-
spect, high crime
rates, low tax base
and reduced po-
lice and school
services, child
neglect and wife
abuse, and always
the continuing
export of human
and financial capi-
tal-all these feed
on each other ...
nest together to
create the impov-
erished commu-
nity. [Thus the
need for] a com-
munity-based and
comprehensi ve
approach to improving the local economy rather than
trying to desperately somehow rebuild each individual
so she or he can leave the impoverished conditions
behind."
This kind of approach is often alien to macroplanners,
grants officers and government officials, who tend to
view things programmatically and categorically. But to
those who live under the crushing weight of poverty, it
is viewed as essential. Indeed, it is at the local level that
one feels the impact of poverty's toll and senses the po-
tential for comprehensive change. For this reason, the
community development movement and other similar
initiatives were embraced by many people and commu-
nities.
Community Action
Beginning in 1949, the Pratt Institute Center for Com-
munity and Environment Development worked closely
with a coalition of grassroots organizations in Brooklyn's
Bedford-Stuyvesant area. They were among those who
joined the community development movement in the
early 1960s. Initially, the coalition attempted to attract
city support for a new approach to the renewal of the
community and discouraged the acceptance of the seg-
mented programs that were being offered. Arguing that
this approach would raise expectations the city could
not meet, the City Planning Commission rejected the
community's request to initiate a comprehensive devel-
opment plan for Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The coalition brought together by the Central Brooklyn
Coordinating Council responded by finding a way to or-
ganize the initiative itself. Thus, the idea of a self-
incorporated group with the mission to initiate a com-
prehensive community development effort emerged. As
a result of this effort, one member of the City Planning
Commission arranged for a meeting between the Bedford-
Stuyvesant group and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. This
meeting eventually led to the creation of one of the
nation's first community development corporations (see
City Limits, October 1987).
At a conference
on community de-
velopment held in
Bedford-
Stuyvesant on
December9,1966,
Kennedy an-
nounced the for-
mation of what
was to become the
Bedford-
Stuyvesant Resto-
ration Corpora-
tion, the first
community devel-
opment corpora-
tion in the nation.
He said: "Eight
months ago, we
found our views
on the crisis before
us to be in close
correspondence.
You through a
manifesto ... and I
in a series of speeches on the urban crisis, each proposed
programs to meet this crisis in a comprehensive and co-
ordinated effort, involving the resources and energies of
government, of private industry, and of the community
itself.
"We argued that the necessary program begin with the
physical reconstruction-because it is needed for its
own sake to provide decent and pleasant homes and
neighborhoods, but more importantly, as a base and fo-
cus for the creation of jobs-well-paying, dignified work,
trades and skills which will be useful for a lifetime.
Indeed, we see our aim as a vital, expanding economy
throughout the community-creating jobs in manufac-
turing and commerce and service industries."
What Robert Kennedy outlined was a conceptual
framework for a comprehensive and integrated commu-
nity planning and development effort. His speech recog-
nized that the efforts of community residents combined
with those ofthe private sector and of government could
bring about the economic, social and physical revitaliza-
tion of some of our most impoverished areas.
Vital to this approach is the idea that community
development requires residents' participation not only
in decision-making but also in the production, manage-
ment and control of locally produced goods and serv-
ices.
This type of community development also helps pro-
mote the formation and maintenance of locally based
institutions, including religious institutions, schools,
day-care facilities for young and old, health centers,
stores and recreational facilities. Strong local institu-
tions provide the framework for the emergence of social
organizations and the creation of economic opportuni-
ties for residents of low income communities.
Persistent Poverty
The years since 1964 have brought many changes,
both in public programs and attitudes towards poverty.
But the result has been an adverse effect on low income
and disenfranchised communities. The "economic sur-
pluses" of the 1960s have evolved into the "scarcity" of
the 1970s and the "deficits" of the 1980s. Liberal initia-
tives ofthe early 1960s to empower low income commu-
nities socially, economically and politically shifted by
the late 1960s and 1970s to a service and maintenance
approach, and now in the 1980s and 1990s, to laissez
faire policies resulting in neglect. These shifts have
exacerbated poverty and, commensurately, racism and
class conflict.
As the national economy devolved from the robust
'60s to the deficit-riddled '90s, there's also been a corre-
sponding increase in joblessness, underemployment,
welfare dependency and severe social disruption marked
by alarming rises in drug use and crime. These develop-
ments have undoubtedly been exacerbated by the poli-
cies of neglect that have dominated domestic policy for
more than a decade. These trends-both in numbers of
families affected by poverty and their geographic con-
centration-are likely to continue unless significant
steps are taken.
Urban sociologists, researchers, foundations and pub-
lic policy activists are again debating strategies to address
the persistent poverty that prevails in many communi-
ties. To a great extent, the debate is concentrated among
academics who focus on the nature and causes of persis-
tent poverty. Policies to address these problems are
being discussed primarily within a narrow professional
setting instead of among a broad array of professional
Poverty: The Affluent Society Keeps Producing More Poor Families
P
erhaps one of the most stunning features of Amer-
ica in 1990 is the amount of poverty that still exists
despite seven years of economic growth and rela-
tively low unemployment.
In 1988, 32 million Americans were officially de-
fined as poor, an increase of 7.5 million since 1978.
The rate of poverty increased from 11.4 percent to
13.1 percent despite a drop in the rate of unemploy-
ment.
The actual number of poor people may be much
higher-24.1 percent-according to a study by the
Joint Economic Committee, which updates the way
poverty is measured.
The official poverty rate is based on 1955 data
about the way American families spend their money.
Among other changes, families today must pay a
higher proportion of their income on housing (42 per-
cent versus 34 percent, with low income families
paying an even higher percentage) and much more on
child care (there were many fewer one-parent families
and working women in 1955.)
Even using the official poverty rate, the growth in
the number of poor children has been alarming. In
1987, one in every five was poor, a total of 12.4
million, a 25 percent increase in a decade. One in four
children under six fall below the poverty line (a total
of five million children), according to a recent report
of Columbia University's National Center for Chil-
dren in Poverty.
Nearly 50,000 of these children live in detention
centers, hospitals, foster homes and mental health fa-
cilities, according to a report of the House Select
Committee on Children, Youth and Families. A simi-
lar number are malnourished, according to an interim
report of the National Commission on Children.
While many still argue that high rates of poverty
among minorities drive up our overall rate of poverty
(31.6 percent of blacks and 26.8 percent of Hispanics
are poor versus 10.1 percent of whites), two thirds of
the poor in this country are white.
The poor are also poorer than they were 10 years
ago. In 1978, the median poor family's earnings were
$1,930 below the poverty level. The income of the
poorest fifth of families dropped by 14 percent while
the income of the wealthiest fifth increased by 17.5
percent.
One reason for the increase in the severity of pov-
erty is cuts in anti-poverty programs. Adjusting for
population growth and inflation, total spending on
food stamps, welfare and child nutrition fell an aver-
age of two percent between 1981 and 1987. As a
result, the "safety net" is rescuing fewer people.
Whereas poverty programs lifted half the poor out of
poverty in 1979, they lift but 42 percent today, accord-
ing to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The cost of government simply providing basic
necessities to the poor (food stamps, welfare pay-
ments, housing assistance, health care) exceeds $150
billion a year, according to figures compiled by econo-
mist Sar Levitan in his report, "A Proper Inheritance:
Investing in the Self-Sufficiency of Poor Families."
This figure would be considerably higher if all the
poor benefitted from these programs (less than half of
those eligible receive food stamps; less than half of the
poor participate in Medicaid; only 29 percent of poor
renters received housing assistance in 1985.) This
figure would also be higher if the programs provided
enough support to give people at least a poverty level
existence (the assistance given to three-person fami-
lies in 32 states is less than 50 percent ofthe poverty
line, according to a study by the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities).
But long-term studies have demonstrated that this
cost could be brought down over time if we invested
more money now in preventative programs, such as
preschool development, according to a Ford Founda-
tion report, "The Common Good: Social Welfare and
the American Future," which states, "The few exist-
ing in-depth, long-term studies show that good-qual-
ity preschool development programs can improve
poor children's achievement throughout the school
years, reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy and
dependency on welfare." 0
Excerpted from, "America's Third Deficit: Too Little
Investment in People and Infrastructure," prepared
by the Center for Community Change. The report was
written by Timothy Saasta, with assistance from Wil-
liam Hamilton, and can be obtained by sending $3 to
CCC, Publications, 1000 Wisconsin A venue, Wash-
ington DC, 20007. For information on bulk rates, call
202-342-0519.
sectors. ~ i s s i n g
almost entirely
from this discourse
are the community
groups and the poor
themselves.
Limited
Expectations
One of the most
disturbing legacies
of the Reagan-Bush
era is the general
acceptance of the
inevitability of po v-
erty by government
and by many ofthe
foundations that
fund local anti-pov-
erty programs.
There's a growing
sense afoot that our
ability to bring
about positive so-
cial and economic change is severely limited. To the
extent that community groups, activists and community
development corporations accept these limitations, they
appear to be reducing their scope and their perception of
what can be accomplished to a narrow range of activities.
This trend has resulted in the severe diminution of
potentially effective community-based development
strategies that attempt to address a number of interre-
lated problems-from affordable housing to jobs to day
care. Given the nation's declining economy, it would be
naive to believe that a comprehensive community-based
plan could significantly alter overall prospects for low
income people without a healthy and equitable macro-
econmic development climate.
Nevertheless, as the executive panel of the Ford
Foundation's project on social welfare and the Ameri-
can future states, "A healthy economy, while essential,
will not of itself generate the human investment and
mutual caring that are necessary for a strong, just soci-
ety. And while America has grown properly skeptical of
programs that foster dependency, it has also learned that
it is futile to ask people to take greater personal respon-
sibility for their lives unless they have a real chance to
escape from the material conditions that foster insecu-
rity and despair. The deeper issue is the need to create
a fairer system in which all will share both obligations
and benefits."
Proposals for the revitalization of inner-city neigh-
borhoods like those fostered by William Julius Wilson,
a sociologist from the University of Chicago, are feasible
only if they are supported by community or workplace
organizing efforts. Without such organizing, it would be
impossible to achieve the national consensus needed to
get the policies adopted that would promote economic
growth, job creation and housing development.
A venue of Opportunity
N ear the end of his 1966 speech announcing the for-
mation of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corpora-
tion, Sen. Robert Kennedy said: "If we here can meet and
master our problems, if this community can become an
avenue of opportu-
nity and a place of
pleasure and excite-
ment for its people,
then others will
take heart from your
example and men
all over the United
States will remem-
ber your contribu-
tion with the deep-
est gratitude. But if
this effort-with
your community
Cl. leadership, with
~ the advantages of
l;j participation by the
~ business commu-
~ nity, with full co-
~ operation from the
city administration
and with the help
of the outstanding
men in so many
fields of American life-if this community fails, then
others will falter, and a noble dream of equality and
dignity in our cities will be sorely tried ... "
The reality in 1990 is, despite some exceptions, that
"outstanding men [and women]" of business and gov-
ernment, who, by withdrawing their support and
resources, have failed to fulfill the commitment that
Robert Kennedy and others sought.
In the last 25 years, we have learned important les-
sons about community development and poverty: that
focused, targeted development often has a positive re-
sult; that as intractable as they appear, problems of poor
communities can be solved by a strong and enduring
partnership between community residents and private
and public support; and, finally, that the problems are
complex and multidimensional and require long-term,
integrative approaches.
The function of community development is, primar-
ily, to improve the quality of life for people in impover-
ished neighborhoods. Quality of life is improved by
increasing the social, economic and political opportuni-
ties available. Fundamental to that effort is the empow-
erment achieved by a range of choices, opportunities
and responsibilities.
Community development, as we have come to know
it over the past quarter century, has been both exciting
and frustrating. All of the participants in this process
have learned important lessons and have witnessed
wonderful successes. We have also seen neighborhoods
continue to decline and lives filled with despair. Funda-
mental change has, in many neighborhoods, been elu-
sive; problems have overwhelmed progress. The most
important lesson is that there is no magic answer. Physi-
cal development, economic and political development
and personal development must all occur, each at its
own pace, each with its own integrity. 0
Ron Shiffman is the executive director of the Pratt Insti-
tute Center for Community and Environmental Develop-
ment and a member of the New York City Planning
Commission.
One Mother's Story
Gwendolyn Smith and her children used to be homeless. Now they have a home:
a city-owned crack house in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
BY LISA GLAZER
F
ranklin Avenue is a narrow strip of tar in
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and on a blazing
summer afternoon it serves as a kind of demar-
cation zone. On one side of the street are
Gwendolyn Smith and her five children, sit-
ting on kitchen chairs they've brought down
from their apartment. On the other side of the street,
leaning against a black metal dumpster, are a handful of
drug dealers.
"Yo, big-bottie girl," yells one of the drug dealers from
across the street. He picks up an empty glass bottle,
throws it in the air, and it smashes on the street. The
young men beside him chortle, elbow each other and
swagger.
Smith tenses her mouth but quickly swallows the
insult. She turns her attention toward her four-month
old baby, Mydisa, and wipes her face clean. The drug
dealers are bored, business is slow and Smith isn't
taking any chances-she lives in the same building the
dealers operate from.
"The only way I make it is when they come in, I'll say
hi," she explains. "They speak to me, I speak to them. I
said I wouldn't call the police if they stay out of my
apartment but they come through anyway. I called the
police and they said 'How come you did that?' I said
'Because you came through the apartment.' My
apartment's not the same as upstairs. I had to take a
stand somewhere."
Across the street the drug dealers are standing in front
of a grey three-story building. The Smiths used to be
homeless but now they have a home and this is it: 756
Franklin Avenue. The front door is unlocked and the
stairwell is held up by four wooden stakes. The Smiths
live on the second floor, the drug dealers operate from
the third floor and the landlord is the City of New York.
Five times the drug dealers have been locked out and
five times they've returned.
The Smiths are just one of more than 10,000 homeless
families who have moved into buildings that are run by
the Division of Property Management within the city's
Department of Housing Preservation and Development
(HPD). Most of these buildings are located in Central
Brooklyn, Harlem and the South Bronx and after years of
neglect many are drug infested and structurally un-
sound. Gwendolyn Smith is trying to improve her living
conditions and she hopes to eventually get off welfare,
but much of her time and energy is spent raising and pro-
tecting her children, maintaining an uneasy truce with
the drug dealers and wrangling with the public agencies
that are supposed to be helping her. In an atmosphere of
drug trafficking, violence, poverty and physical deterio-
ration, forward rrogress is extremely difficult.
On this smal stretch of Franklin Avenue, there are
signs of renewal and blight. There's a Korean deli, a
small grocery, a bodega painted bright red and yellow,
one large brick building that's newly renovated and a
string of dilapidated three- and four-story buildings,
most of them abandoned. South American vendors stroll
down the street selling T-shirts and frilly dresses for $5
each. Kids ride bicycles on the glass-strewn sidewalks.
In the center of the block are the drug dealers, who use
the cement in front of 756 Franklin Avenue as their
home office. Neighbors on their way to the subway or
the grocery make a wide arc around the building, some-
times going so far as to detour into the street.
Is this a typical summer afternoon in the neighbor-
hood? Gwendolyn Smith says she isn't sure-she usu-
ally stays home,
guarding the apart-
ment. She ' s very
straightforward
about the situation:
"Most of the summer
we stayed inside."
I
nside the apart-
ment it feels safe.
Behind the lock-
ed door, the lino-
leum floors are
scrubbed clean and
there are framed
pictures of flowers
on the walls. A few
days later, Smith is
sitting in her living
room mending a pair
leaf earrings and her hair is knotted back in tight corn
rows. Among the children, she's a comforting presence,
a solidly-built woman with an ample lap, strong arms
and calves just wide enough for a toddler's arms to hold
on to. Her face is broad and she has small, clear brown
eyes. On the rare occasions that she breaks into a de-
lighted grin, you can see the gap where one of her front
teeth is missing. She looks older than her 27 years.
The apartment is a classic railway flat: a small kitchen
at one end, a living room, a wide hallway lined with
bunkbeds, then the main bedroom, where the week's
washing is strung out on a line. The bedroom has plenty
of furniture: two cribs, a chest of drawers, as well as a
television, a stereo, folded laundry, and neat stacks of
Pampers and board games.
It's nearly noon and Smith decides the family should
get ready for a brief outing to the school around the
corner where a free
lunch is served
through the summer.
Shanihangsherhead
when she hears the
news but Smith tells
her there's nothing to
be embarrassed about.
Ever since the family
spent more than a year
living in the Brooklyn
Arms welfare hotel ,
Shani has been em-
barrassed about ac-
cepting free food. "I
just don't like it," she
CJ) says, already resigned
~ to the fact that she's
Ii going.
~ Getting ready to
fil leave is a major pro-
of ripped shorts with IMI* .... ~ The hallway is out of bounds for Gwendolyn Smith's children until
she checks to make sure it's clear.
a needle and thread
while her two oldest
children play checkers.
duction. Despite her
reluctance, Shani
Shani, who is 11, is a very careful player, surveying
the board and thinking deeply before making her moves.
Ten-year-old Unik is more eager to keep the game mov-
ing, sliding his chips left or right in quick conquests.
Earlier in the week, the entire family played Monopoly,
and Unik rapidly acquired most of the property on the
board, loading it up with hotels and forcing his sister
and his mother into debt.
Looking back over the week, Smith says, "We've
mostly been playing Monopoly." There's a boisterous
crying sound from the bedroom and she goes to check on
Mydisa, returning with the baby in her arms. She sits
back down again, bounces her on her knee, and talks
about having children.
"I learned how to look after children from my sister's
friends' kids," she says. "I'd babysit for $10 so they
could go out to parties. Sometimes they wouldn't come
back until the next day. I used to do it for a lot of people.
People say to me 'I never thought you'd have so many
kids.' But I was always watchin' other people's kids and
I like kids."
Smith speaks very quickly, with a strained, nasal
voice. She's wearing a simple summer dress, small gold
readies her brother
Keith, laying him down on the double bed in the main
bedroom, changing his diapers with practiced skill, then
cooling his small body with baby powder. She eases the
toddler into a playsuit, shoes and socks, then cleans his
face. For final measure, she dabs some vaseline on her
palms, rubs them together, then runs them through
Keith's hair to smooth it back. When he's finally set, she
unfolds a stroller and places him inside.
At the same time, Smith is preparing Mydisa's bottle,
overseeing a change of clothes for the middle son,
Rashawn, and trying to fix the broken strap of one of
Unik's sandals. Rashawn is jumping up and down with
excitement. Getting everyone ready takes a good 40 min-
utes, with a lot of running around, looking for clean
clothes and trips to the bathroom. Before they leave, ev-
eryone gets a good once-over with a hairbrush. Then it's
out into the hallway.
T
he hallway is dark, dank and dirty. The floor is
littered with garbage and the stairs are held up
precariously by four wooden stakes. Graffiti on
the wall reads: "Boyee," "It's in Effect" and "Money
Don't Love No-One."
When Smith talks about life in her building, she's
very matter-of-fact. The stories tumble out, one after
another, but she rarely raises her voice or pauses for ef-
fect. It's almost like she's talking about someone else's
life or a character on TV.
Reflecting on the last two years, she says the drug
dealing has intensified and the hallway is now out of
bounds for the kids until she checks to make sure it's
clear. "People are standing in the hall getting high and if
the kids come out, they still get high; they don't care,"
she explains. "They're pissing in the hallways, doing
stuff that should be done in bedrooms.
"When I first moved in I would sweep the hallways
from top to bottom. I would keep it nice and clean and
put out mothballs. But when people come smoking in
the halls and they say, 'Bitch, go in your apartment,
we're getting high here,' then it's time to stay away.
"When Unik sees them, he says, 'My mommy is going
to call the cops on you.' I had to tell him he has to stop
doing that. At three o'clock when he comes home from
school he acts like a siren. He says, 'Hold it, this is the
cops, put your hands up.' For a little boy to say that,
somebody could hurt him. I told him he has to stop doing
that. For him, it's funny.
"Shani, one day a man a pproached her in the hall wa y.
He said come here, little girl. So I told them upstairs.
They beat him up. He couldn't get out of the building
fast enough. They beat him good.
"I try and call the police two or three times a week, but
it's just like any other case to them," says Smith. "A
police officer said their [the dealers'] weapons make the
police weapons look like toy guns. He was kind of
joking, but I didn't know what to say.
" ... When they start shooting at night, I run from one
room to the next. 'They mostly shoot at around two or
three in the morning. The kids, they just shake. Keith,
he's a nervous wreck at night time. The others just lie
there and say mommy, mommy, I check to see that
they're alright.
"Shani gets very highly upset. The majority oftimes
after school, she'll try to go to sleep. She says she can't
take it any more. Unik, he acts up, ready to fight and
throw things ... and Rashawn, his nerves are so bad he
wets the bed. It's too much pressure for him.
"Now the kids are saying they wish they were back in
the hotel because they can't go outside to play. There
were so many things they could do in the hotel but
there's nothing here."
Smith stops and allows herself the briefest moment of
despair. "It's tough. It's ridiculous. I'm disappointed.
I'm very much disappointed. HPD always says they're
going to do something about it but no one ever comes.
Even the mailman is scared to come here."
Then she adds, "I give it time. I'm having a hard time
dealing with it but I've got to be strong for my kids."
G
wendolyn Smith has spent most of her life being
strong to support other people. She was raised in
the Coney Island housing projects, the youngest
in a family of two girls and a boy. She dropped out of
school when she was 15 to look after her mother, who
had a debilitating brain disease. She's never met her
father.
The same year that Smith dropped out of school she
met the man who became her husband. They were
introduced at a party, went to the movies, became a
couple and had three children together. Shortly after
they were married, his drinking habit developed into a
serious problem and he became violent. This led Smith
to leave and stay and with a friend.
After a short-lived reunion with her husband, who
ended up doing a stint in jail for robbery, Smith went to
live with her brother, who needed care because he devel-
oped the same disease as their mother. When her brother
moved to Virginia to stay with their older sister, Smith
hoped to keep his apartment, but she couldn't afford it
on her own-she received $135 a month for rent from
welfare and the apartment cost $516, she says.
The first night the family was homeless, she and her
children spent the night on the subway. "Just one night
we rode the trains," she says. "I didn't want to ask people
for help. Then I looked at the kids and they were crying
so I asked for help." The family then spent four months
living on the floors of friends' apartments and eventu-
ally ended up at the Brooklyn Arms welfare hotel. They
spent a year and four months living in one small room.
At the hotel, Smith joined Parents on the Move, an
advocacy group formed by homeless mothers at the
Brooklyn Arms. She also met her current boyfriend,
Winston, who was working as a security guard at the
hotel. He's the father of her two youngest children and
they're still involved.
When the city announced plans to close down the
Brooklyn Arms, Smith was afraid she'd be thrown on the
streets. She and other homeless mothers from Parents on
the Move protested by barricading themselves in the
hotel's office. This eventually led to court action and a
promise from the city that the Brooklyn Arms families
would all be placed in permanent housing.
Smith wanted to stay in Brooklyn so her kids wouldn't
have to change schools, and officials from the city's
housing department and the Human Resources Admini-
stration (HRA) showed her the apartment at 756 Fran-
klin Avenue. The building was ramshackle, but the
apartment was freshly painted, with a new bathroom
and working appliances. Smith agreed to take it. After
nearly two years, she was no longer homeless.
"I was so glad, really glad. We had no food, no
blankets, no curtains. We slept on the floors, that's how
happy we were that we had some place to call home. The
kids, they just ran from one room to the next."
After moving in, Smith received beds, a living room
set, a rocking chair and three tables from Lend-a-Hand,
a furniture service run by the HRA. She bought a rug
from a peddler on the street and one of the kids brought
home gerbils in a cage from school. "It just felt so good
to have a place to call HOME," she recalls.
I
t didn't take long for the euphoria to wear off. The first
week in the new apartment, the drug dealers cut a
hole in their floor-Smith's kitchen ceiling-and
used it as an escape drop for drugs. Shortly afterwards,
the police raided the building and the drug dealers
found a getaway route they have used numerous times
since then: They jumped down to a landing outside
Smith's living room, broke the windows and ran through
the apartment. A while later, Unik and Shani were
playing in the apartment next door and two bullets were
fired through the window.
"When I moved in, they [housing officials] said they
would repair the building and make it secure within
three weeks," says Smith. "No one came out. Since I've
been here we've had four different managers ... What
does it take to make them do things? Does one of my kids
have to be hurt?"
The building that Smith lives in is one of more than
3,000 run-down properties acquired by the city when
landlords didn't pay their real estate taxes. These build-
ings, which are formally known
as in rem property, are mostly run
Besides the housing department, Smith's other ave-
nue for change is the police department. In the past year,
the police have made numerous raids and arrests-but
the drug dealers keep coming back. Police officer Kim
Royster says the Brooklyn north narcotics squad recentl y
made four arrests in front of the building for the sale of
crack and two arrests inside the building for crack sell-
ing. The year before, the local precinct made 17 arrests
in the building.
These concerns are just a few among many, as it turns
out. Smith says she receives just
$384 a month in welfare and
by the city's Division of Property
Management and are renowned
as among the worst in the city. In
the past five years, 12,238 home-
less families have moved out of
welfare hotels and shelters and
into these buildings.
Apartments for homeless fami-
lies are renovated by HPD's Bu-
reau of Vacant Apartment Repair
and Rental (BVARR). While
BV ARR sometimes does a good
job fixing up apartments, this
doesn't solve the broader prob-
lems within a building. Another
department, the Capital Projects
Bureau, spent more than $50
million between 1986 and 1989
"When Unik sees
them, he says, 'My
mommy is going to
call the cops on you.'
I had to tell him
$207 in food stamps, with $315
taken out for rent. The money is
supposed to be transferred auto-
matically from welfare to the city's
housing agency, but because of a
bureaucratic snafu, Smith has
been receiving notices that she is
more than $1,000 in arrears.
"This is the bureaucracy," says
Derick Nesbit from the Fort Greene
income maintenance office. "I
don't want to be rude but all I can
tell you is there are 163 other
cases I have to deal with. I only
see her about every three months
or so. I can tell you her [rent]
check is being cashed." Post from
he has to stop
doing that."
fixing systemic problems like
broken boilers and antiquated
electricity, but until recently the money was directed to
buildings with the least amount of problems. Because of
this triage process, many hazardous buildings like 756
Franklin Avenue have still not received major repairs.
The individual with the greatest possible impact on
an in rem building is the manager-but these city work-
ers are responsible for an average of 26 troubled build-
ings each. When a manager can't cope with the drug traf-
ficking in a building, he or she can turn to a special
narcotics control unit, but this unit is in enormous de-
mand and the buildings that get the most assistance are
often those that have an active, organized tenant associa-
tion. Small buildings with few tenants-buildings like
756 Franklin Avenue-are, once again, easily overlooked.
In the time that Smith has been in her apartment, her
manager and construction workers have visited, but
only intermittently, and mostly to do patch-up work:
fixing windows that were broken during a police sweep;
installing the wooden stakes to hold up the stairs after
calls were made by City Limits; putting new locks on the
front door after they were broken. In May, an HPD
official visited the building and promised Smith the
building would begin major renovations by July. These
renovations have not yet begun.
Roz Post, a spokesperson for HPD, says, "The building
is in line for renovation but it is not at that point yet. I
don't know when it will be at that point." She adds, "As
far as the drug dealers are concerned, we have resealed
and resealed apartment 3L and they just break back in:
I'm told we had to reseal it five times. We're very aware
of the situation-our narcotics division visited the build-
ing twice in August. It 's not for lack of trying but it's not
an easy problem."
HPD says the rent issue is now
being investigated.
Whenever Smith wants to prod
the police, her housing manager or her caseworker at
welfare, she can't justgo into her kitchen and pick up the
phone. Her welfare money and food stamps barely
stretch to cover basic expenses, so a telephone is out of
the family's price range. Every time she needs to make a
call, she has to make a trip through the hallway and out
to the street corner to use a pay phone.
In the midst of these struggles, Smith gets support
from her boyfriend, a handful offriends and relatives, as
well as Margaret Stevens, the director of the Self-Suffi-
ciency Project, a state-funded program of the Victim
Services Agency that provides assistance for families
that used to live in the Brooklyn Arms. "Gwendolyn has
a lot of quiet strength," says Stevens. "I have this story
about taking her this wallpaper. She covered her shelves,
her refrigerator, her walls. Despite the situation in her
building, she's still trying to improve and beautify her
home."
Stevens works with one other paid staff member and
a volunteer. They have a case load of 90 families and are
regularly in touch with about 50 families. "We talk to
HPD and the police precinct, but we're talking about
underfunded, understaffed agencies," she continues.
"What we see is that a lot of communities are a hotbed of
drug trafficking. At HPD they complain they don' t have
enough money to do the job properly. We're under-
staffed too. We're victims of burn-out. It impacts on your
ability to keep going when you don't have the resources
to protect your clients.
''I'd love to see Gwen get decent housing," she says. "I
hate seeing her kids in that building. It's a demoralizing
and depressing situation but she still keeps on going."
A
nother summer afternoon and the heat inside
the apartment is so intense the family decides to
sit outside again. This time, the drug dealers
stroll across the street to chat.
Smith complains to Nicky, the leader of the drug
dealers , explaining that some of the younger dealers
were calling her names. A stocky man who appears to
be in his early 30s, Nicky is wearing blue jeans, a plain
red sweatshirt cut off at the sleeves and white high-top
sneakers. He's very jovial, apologizing to Smith and
promising to keep his troops in line.
Nicky places a boom-box behind Smith's chair and
asks her to look after it for him. He and another dealer,
Ramon, stand idly on the street, passing time. On the
middle finger of each of Ramon's hands there's an
ostentatious gold ring in the shape of ram's horns.
Nicky and Ramon go to the Korean deli and get a bag
of ice and five plums. They fight over the plums, and
throw one at a woman passing by. Then Nicky picks up
a piece of concrete and throws it at the wall across the
street.
A young boy is going around the corner and one of the
drug dealers shouts out , asking him where he's going.
Another man yells in return that he' s going to teach him
how to smoke a pipe. There's a sharp burst of hysterical
laughter.
A brown four-door car pulls up and a young man
walks out and hands a plastic bag to Nicky, who disap-
pears into the building. A steady stream of people are
stumbling up and down the stairs. "It's like they've got
working papers to do this," hisses Smith.
Nicky decides to play with Keith, Smith's toddler. He
throws a fake punch and a kick in his direction. Then he
turns to Unik. "Whatsa matter with you, punk nigger?"
asks Nicky with a big grin on his face. "Why don't you get
your ass in foster care?"
Some women turn the corner across the street and
Nicky and Ramon start boasting about their sexual prow-
ess. They name women from the neighborhood who
agree to have sex in return for crack, and point them out
as they walk down the block.
Smith chuckles nervously, listening but trying to re-
main distant. Shani is sitting nearby on a milk crate, her
chin propped on her hands, staring in the opposite direc-
tion with a this-isn't-really-happening-to-me expres-
sion on her face. Unik is trying to act tough, leaning
against a wall looking surly. Keith and the baby are quiet
and Rashawn is crouching behind his mother's chair,
hiding. 0
Epilogue: In recent months, tensions between Smith
and the drug dealers have increased. She says they
falsely accused her son Unik of stealing drugs from the
hallway and threatened his safety. She has applied for
a housing authority apartment and she's also consider-
ing taking the city to court to force them to repair her
building. In September, an 18-year-old was shot in the
hallway outside Smith's apartment.
!I
Bankers Trust Company
Community Development Group
A resource for the non ... profit
development community
Gary Hattem,Vice President
280 Park New York, New York 10017

By Doug Turetsky
Day-Care Disgrace
Renewing a legacy of derelict centers and private profit.
T
o most of us, day care means
the future: young children at
play, early education. For par-
ents struggling with work or
school, it means a decent place to
leave their kids. But in New York, day
care often means greed, sweetheart
deals and a legacy of day-care centers
located in deteriorated buildings.
Day-care centers built under the
city's direct-lease program serve
22,000 children in some of the poor-
est neighborhoods in New York. Re-
cent reports issued by Comptroller
Elizabeth Holtzman and State Sen.
Franz Leichter offer a bleak picture of
the conditions in many of these city-
subsidized day-care centers. Accord-
ing to the Holtzman report, at the
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Day Care
Center in Queens plaster is crumbling
and heaters falling from the walls. At
the Champ Morningside Day I Care
Center in Manhattan, heating is in-
adequate and the children's rooftop
play area is unusable.
Twenty years ago the Lindsay
administration, faced with a severe
shortage of day-care centers, created
direct leasing as a means of getting
new centers quickly built. The city
leased these newly erected buildings
from their developers for 20 years and
contracted with a local community
group or nonprofit to run the day-care
program. Of the approximately 170
day-care centers built under the di-
rect-lease system, many are beset with
chronic problems. Says Dr. Antony
Ward, executive director of the advo-
cacy group Child Care, Inc., "We
constantly hear from day-care direc-
tors about flooded basements and
unusable rooftops." Now these leases
are coming up for renewal and child
care advocates are pressuring reluc-
tant city officials to force landlords to
make repairs.
No Surprise
The construction problems at many
of these centers appeared almost as
soon as they were built. Flush with
20-year leases, the landlords who
constructed the buildings had little
incentive to build them solidly or
provide regular maintenance.
The terms of the leases were in-
credibly lucrative, with annual rents
averaging $89,000 and the city pick-
ing up the tab for real estate taxes (at
an annual average cost of $30,000
each). City officials also agreed to cover
costs typically charged to the land-
lord in other city leases.
To some critics, it came as no sur-
prise. Many of the original leases went
to politically wired landlord/devel-
oper teams. For example, N. Hilton
Rosen's Euclid Avenue Associates
won lease agreements for seven cen-
ters with the city-worth about $17
million over 20 years. Rosen's brother,
Richard, held several top-level posts
in the Lindsay administration, which
was awarding the leases.
Similarly, the Sam Getz Construc-
tion Corp. received 22 leases for day-
care centers, including the troubled
Champ Morningside center. Getz'
lawyer for the deals, which were worth
about $1.8 million annually, was for-
mer Assemblyman Leonard Simon,
one of the first Democrats to cross
party lines and support Lindsay.
Simon even cut himself in on a couple
of deals-using his wife's maiden
name. All the leases have since been
sold to other landlords.
Other prominent New Yorkers who
had a piece of the day-care pie in-
cluded then-Council Member Samuel
Wright, former state Assembly
Speaker Stanley Steingut and power-
house attorney William Shea. The
scandal in the awarding of the day-
care center leases was amply chron-
icled in reports released in the '70s by
Leichter, then-State Sen. Major
Owens, former Department ofInvesti-
gations Commissioner Robert Ruskin
and others. The tragedy is that the
city-and its children-are still pay-
ing.
Renewals
By 1994, all of the original day-care
leases will be up for renewal. The first
of them are now winding their through
the city's approval process, with the
planning commission having already
approved about a dozen. Planning
commission member Amanda Bur-
den, a critic of conditions at the cen-
ters who voted against the renewals
says, "For the most part the landlords
haven't done any repairs for 20 years."
The city's Human Resources
Administration (HRA), which moni-
tors the day-care centers, can demand
repairs or, in some instances, have
city construction crews do repairs and
deduct the cost from the rent. But
such efforts have met with only lim-
ited success.
The planning commission's deci-
sions on HRA's requests to renew the
leases have focused on the technical
issue of whether the sites are appro-
priate for da-y-care centers. But testi-
mony at commission hearings prod-
ded HRA to change the renewals to no
more than 10 years and pushed the
Dinkins administration to promise
public hearings before the leases are
signed.
Assurances
HRA is also assuring critics that
centers will be repaired before sign-
ing the renewals. Ward from Child
Care, Inc., remains skeptical, point-
ing out that in 20 years the agency has
had little success in securing repairs.
"Nothing they [city officials] say guar-
antees the maintenance of the build-
ings," he says.
Part of the problem is the city's
chronic need for day-care centers.
Technically, the city could cancel
leases held by landlords who don't do
repairs. But that would only exacer-
bate the need for more day-care places.
Even HRA Commissioner Barbara
Sabol admits the landlords have the
city over the proverbial barrel. Re-
sponding to criticisms of the agency
in the comptroller's report, Sabol
wrote: "It would be difficult if not
impossible ... to simply negotiate new
leases with new landlords when neg-
ligent landlords fail to make neces-
sary repairs. Day-care centers are
specifically built for group care for
children. The suggestion that [the
agency] simply pick up and move to
some other site when it is dissatisfied
with landlord service is implausible
and impractical."
But State Sen. Leichter says the
city does have options besides paying
millions of dollars annually for unus-
able play areas and poorly maintained
day-care facilities. "The city should
take over many of these centers," says
Leichter. "There is no reason private
owners should profit off our scarce
day-care resources while providing
inadequate services."
To Leichter and others, the ques-
tion isn't just one of money. It's the
future of thousands of the city's
children. 0
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
Manuals, guides, handbooks, pamphlets and fact sheets
available from City Limits' information clearinghouse.
TENANT AND HOUSING RIGHTS
"Housing Fact Sheets." Cover a wide range of topics important to
tenants. Some available in Spanish. Metropolitan Council on Housing.
Free. Send self-addressed envelope with stamp.
"A Tenant's Guide to Housing Court." Includes information on hold-
overs, eviction notices, nonpayment cases, etc. Separate borough
editions. Association of the Bar of the City of New York. 31 pp. Free.
"When the City Forecloses: Community and Owner Options." A guide
to the tax foreclosure process. Association for Neighborhood and
Housing Development. 33 pp. $6
"A Guide to Redemptions and Releases." Technical guide to how
owners repay back taxes. Association for Neighborhood Housing and
Development. 24 pp. $6
"Rehab and Rehab-Related Rent increases: The ABC's of MCl's."
Guide to understanding and challenging Major Capital Improvement
rent increases. Association for Neighborhood and Housing Develop-
ment. $6
"Subsidized Moderate Rehabilitation Programs: Improving Housing
for Tenants." Detailed guide to city housing subsidy programs. Asso-
ciation of Neighborhood Housing and Development. 75 pp. $25
"Tenant Fact Book." Overview of New York's Omnibus Housing Law.
Open Housing Center. 27 pp. $6.25
"Government-Assisted Co-Ops and Rentals." Outlines eligibility rules
and application procedures. Open Housing Center. 61 pp. $3.75
"Sexual Harassment in Housing." Defines sexual harassment in hous-
ing and outlines what women should do if they are sexually harassed.
City Limits. Free. Send self-addressed envelope with stamp.
"Becoming a Cooperative." Outlines the steps involved in buying a
city-owned, tenant managed building. Available in Spanish and Eng-
lish. Urban Homesteading Assistance Board. 106 pp. $7.75
"A Guide to Cooperative Ownership." How to meet the tasks and
responsibilities of owning a co-op. Available in Spanish and Enblish.
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board. 126 pp. $14
"Where You Stand." A shareholder's guide to cooperative ownership.
Available in Spanish and English. Urban Homesteading Assistance
Board. 24 pp. $2
HOMELESS RIGHTS
"Reference Manual for Food, Shelter and Resources for the Homeless."
Includes explanations of public assistance programs and shelter rights.
Coalition for the Homeless. 163 pp. $11.50.
PREGNANCY RIGHTS
"Pregnancy Rights." Pamphlet covers health care and patient rights.
Medgar Evers Center for Law and Social Justice. Free. Send self-
addressed envelope with stamp.
ENVIRONMENT
"Making the Difference: Using the Right-to-Know in the Fight Against
Toxics." Shows how to use laws to acquire environmental data. Na-
tional Center for Policy Alternatives. $12.
POLICE HARASSMENT
"What You Can Do: If You Are the Victim of Police Abuse." Pamphlet
on citizen rights during stop, search or arrest. Citywide Committee
Against Police and Racial Violence. Free. Send self-addressed enve-
lope with stamp.
ENTITLEMENTS
"Advocacy, Counseling and Entitlement Services (ACES) Manual."
Guide to 26 government benefit programs. Community Service Soci-
ety. 300 pp. $40
LEGAL RIGHTS
"Understanding the Law." A citizen's guide to the legal system. New
York State Bar Association. 210 pp. $9.95
"The Court of New York." Guide to court procedures, with a glossary
of legal terms. New York State Bar Association. 51 pp. $3
"Managing Your Lawyer. " A guide for tenant associations and coop-
eratives. 28 pp. Urban Homesteading Assistance Board. $2.
GOVERNMENT
"New York City's Development Review Process: A Guide to Partici-
pation. " 24 pp. Municipal Art Society. $1.50
"Coping With City Hall. " Pamphlet. Citizens Union Foundation. Free.
Send self-addressed envelope with stamp.
,-----------------,
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To order, please include check(s) or money order(s) payable to the
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18jNOVEMBER 1990/CITY UMITS
...... ..
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"
i/
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/
IIfWYOIlIC IS RIll OF PIOPII WHO DESlIlVI
A 1.01' MOllE (1l1Dlr rHAII rHErVE.,1I GlrrlllG.
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The Planning Man
Richard Schaffer is the first professional planner to lead the city's
planning commission. But how much of a leader will he be?
BY EVE HEYN
A
visionary. That's who the mayor wanted for the
city's top planner. But his search committee
combed the city for a political heavyweight-a
tough, independent planning chief, nearly as
powerful as the mayor himself. A Carol Bellamy
type, perhaps. Certainly someone politically savvy
enough to juggle the fierce pressures confronting the
chairperson of the City Planning Commission.
Names surfaced and speculation intensified as the
mayor took weeks, and soon months, in his search.
David Dinkins' eventual unveiling of a little known
planner and university dean who had never worked a
day in government caught everyone off guard. But as the
planning department boasts, Richard Lance Schaffer is
the first planner ever to lead the commission that ap-
proves billions of dollars worth of skyscrapers and
contracts each year. His colleagues describe him as fair
and open-minded, a conciliator who takes opposing
views to heart. But visionary? Political heavyweight?
Not exactly.
From all accounts, Schaffer, 43, has made his mark as
a top-notch administrator and institution builder. Col-
leagues say feasibility studies and technical equations
inspire him, rather than lofty goals or ideals.
First Test
But in his first big test , Schaffer debunked his reputa-
tion as a cautious technocrat. In rapid fire succession,
the new chairman oversaw the approval of $5 billion
worth of hotly contested developments. Gone was the
diligence. Gone was the slow, careful planning. A build-
ing designed to swallow part of the Audubon Ballroom,
where Malcolm X was slain, lacked formal plans. Hunters
Point, a $2.3 billion megaproject slated for the Queens' s
waterfront, left off the price tag for such essentials as
police, fire and transportation needs.
But Kent Barwick, president of the Municipal Art So-
ciety, whose alternative proposal for Audubon was re-
jected by Schaffer, says these early votes may not be a
true indication of Schaffer's intentions because the new
planning chief chose not to step into projects left over
from the former administration. Will Schaffer buckle
under future political pressures? "It's too soon to tell, "
Barwick says, echoing the wait-and-see approach of
groups ranging from the Real Estate Board of New York
to low income housing advocates.
"His reputation certainly indicates he will make
changes," adds housing activist Jay Small. But so far,
"It's business as usual. "
In his Reade Street office just a two block sprint from
City Hall, Schaffer shifts in his seat at the first mention-
ing of his early votes. "I thought you'd get to that," he
20jNOVEMBER 1990jCITY UMITS
says, folding the hands he claims were tied because the
projects neared the end of a long planning process, leav-
ing little room for reshaping.
"What I was confronted with, in some cases, because
ofthe way projects were framed when they came to me,
was having to make what I might consider the second or
third best choice.
It was frustrating, "
he admits.
"But I don't
want to imply that
I don't stand be-
hind my votes. I
voted for them,
and I stand behind
them. It would be
gutless to say that
I didn't stand be-
hind my votes. "
Schaffer de-
scribes his job as a
"constant balanc-
ing act" between
economic and
community needs.
"I thinkIwas hired
because the mayor
wanted a planner
who would hon-
~ estly value the
~ complexities,
": would think about
~ them, try to bal-
ance community
concerns, developer concerns, equity issues and come
up with a reasonable judgment," Schaffer says.
At recent hearings, Schaffer' s interaction with the
public displayed those balancing efforts. In a soft voice,
he coaxed a trembling Staten Island woman about to
"faint my first time in City Hall" into relaxing and
introduced to commissioners a gadfly who regularly
rambles rather incoherent testimony. "He's a real
pussycat, " says Sigurd Grava, a pal from Schaffer' s days
at Columbia University (and the first senior-level con-
sultant hired by the new commissioner).
Some say this concern is more than just good man-
ners. "He has opened up the planning commission to
more and more dialogue. I think that's a major step
forward," says planning commissioner Ron Shiffman.
Style or Substance?
But Schaffer's yes votes on Hunters Point and a wave
of other projects sparked cries that this openness to com-
munity input announces a change in style, not substance.
"When he can't conciliate, he will come down on the
side of powers that be," says one Schaffer colleague, who
predicts the planning chief will be as beholden to the
mayor as his predecessors. "You won't see Richard going
out on a limb against the mayor."
Schaffer chuckles at the comments. "That's not a bad
criticism at all. It could be a lot worse," he says.
''I'm going to seriously consider what various commu-
nities have to say. I'm going to sit down and think about
it and make a reasonable judgment." But, referring to his
dual role as head of the 13-member commission and the
400-employee planning agency, Schaffer continues, "It's
the mayor's Department of City Planning. I mean, this is
a mayoral agency. I am appointed by the mayor. I serve
at the pleasure of the mayor. I do not have a fixed term
like other commissioners. I am certainly going to be re-
sponsive to the concerns of the mayor who appointed
me. But I am sure the mayor would not ask me to suspend
judgment. That would be crazy. But I am appointed by
the mayor."
In the coming months, Schaffer can seize the opportu-
nity to put his own mark on a number of major issues.
Confronting the commission are guidelines to prevent
dumping shelters, drug treatment centers, jails and other
unpopular projects in poor neighborhoods. In another
charter mandated responsibility, Schaffer must craft
rules for neighborhoods to get their own community
plans into the formal public review process. And racing
forward is the mammoth Trump City proposal, slated for
Schaffer's own neighborhood of 15 years, the Upper
West Side.
Vote Squeeze
If the mayor appointed a compliant chairman, com-
mission watchers doubt Dinkins found the man to squeeze
votes from his colleagues. For one, commission mem-
bers are no longer solely picked by the mayor. But
equally significant, Schaffer shies away from political
manipulation, a stark contrast to Koch's planning chief
Sylvia Deutsch, renowned for her tight control of the
panel and intimidating public grilling.
"Sylvia very frequently arm twisted the other mem-
bers of the commission," says Robert Kupferman, former
chairman of Manhattan's Community Board 7. "She
would basically intimidate other commission members
into believing that she knew more about projects than
they did. I think he's more reasonable, more human, and
does not use the tactic of intimidation."
At a recent public meeting, Schaffer alternately rocked
in his chair, rested his chin on his hands and picked lint
from his lapel, as commissioners debated leaky roofs,
broken heating systems and windowless frames in city-
leased day-care centers (see page 17). Only after the dis-
cussion simmered down did Schaffer, buried in the far
corner ofthe dais, speak up. The buildings should better
suit children, he agreed. Spectators leaned forward to
hear.
Schaffer's reluctance to hop on the soapbox is hardly
new. As a vice dean at Columbia University's architec-
ture and planning school, he never committed himself
publicly until he let his thoughts gel. And gel some
more. "He is sometimes criticized for taking too much
time ... for being a little bit too slow with decisions,"
says Columbia colleague Grava. The very same criticism
is leveled at Schaffer's boss, David Dinkins.
Schaffer, the ex-son-in-law of former mayor John
Lindsay, is said to move comfortably with people in
power, but he prefers a quieter, one-on-one breed of
politics. Schaffer flaunts nothing. His office is spartan,
free of decoration except for a small framed photograph
of his second wife. In public, Schaffer dons dark, conser-
vative suits and rarely spars with critics. Example: As
paid consultants to Community Board 7 and the Munici-
pal Art Society, Schaffer and Michael Kwartler refused
to back down when politicians and activists blasted a
recommendation to upzone parts of upper Broadway.
While Kwartler fought back with racing adrenaline,
Schaffer recoiled from debate. "Richard knows less
about politics than a person from Mars," says Barwick.
Schaffer agrees that he needs political schooling. "I
am more practiced at the inside portions of the job. If
you've never worked in government and you come in at
this level, then there's some learning that you have to do
and some things that you have to get used to, and
obviously I'm trying to do that."
Affirmative Action
Both at Columbia and Schaffer's last home, The New
School for Social Research, Schaffer made his mark
more as an administrator than teacher. Feasibility stud-
ies, capital outflows, technical answers excited him.
The one ideological stand Schaffer took was on affirma-
tive action, colleagues say. But Schaffer counters, "I
never consider myself an ideologue."
Ideologue or not, Schaffer established at Columbia
a joint degree program with Dilliard College, a black
school in New Orleans. And he helped create a Battery
Park City fund for minority college scholarships. He
has already balked at the racial make-up of the city's
planning department, where minorities comprise 43
percent ofthe employees and 30 percent ofthe agency's
senior level staff. "There's absolutely no question that
we should do better, and we're going to try," Schaffer
says.
Schaffer traces his affirmative action convictions to
his first job out of school. At 25, after completing his
doctorate degree at New York University, the planner
from suburban New Jersey went to the Bedford-
Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in Brooklyn. He
stayed for 10 years. "It really forced me to look at some
of the previously unexamined assumptions in my life. It
forced me to look at people as individuals and to under-
stand people and to realize that there are a lot of very
intelligent, smart, capable people in this world, and that
they come in all different sizes and shapes and genders
and backgrounds."
Issues Ahead
But the chairman dedicated to equality may have
missed his first opportunity to put his ideas into motion.
Preliminary rules drafted by the agency to more fairly
disperse such unpopular city facilities as homeless
shelters and drug-treatment centers, have quickly drawn
fire for the rules' cost-effective criteria and other gigan-
tic loopholes. "Obviously putting projects in low in-
come neighborhoods is going to be cost effective because
city-owned land is largely in low income neighbor-
hoods," says Sam Sue, an attorney with the Charter
Rights Project of New York Lawyers for the Public
Interest.
Schaffer counters that cost is only one of many con-
siderations. " It was an honest attempt to say that equity
really is a legitimate part of the decision-making calcu-
lus that you have," Schaffer says. "I think that we will
honestly attempt, certainly I will honestly attempt, to
weigh all those issues, " of a project's cost and social
impact on a community.
But good intentions are not enough, critics say. The
guidelines, which recently underwent public review in
all five boroughs, are heading toward a full commission
vote as City Limits goes to press.
With a respite in the flood of major development
projects that subsumed the agency in recent years, com-
mission watchers wonder if the chairman might turn
A Look at the Commissioners
P
rofessors, planners, a Gestalt therapist, a commu-
nity activist, and an engineer are among those who
make up the new City Planning Commission. The 13-
member team, mandated by the new City Charter, re-
places the former seven-member body entirely picked
by the mayor. Now, the mayor selects the chair and six
members, and each borough president and the city
council president appoint a member. Only the chair-
person, who also reigns over the Department of Plan-
ning, is a full-time employee of the city, and receives a
Victor Alicea, vice chairman. May-
oral appointee. Urban planner,
Gestalt therapist, social worker, co-
founder and president of Boricua
College. Served on the mayor's ad-
visory appointment committee,
which eventually interviewed Ali-
cea for commission post: "It cer-
tainly ought to do planning, which
is not what it has been doing in the
past. I think it has to lookat the multiplicity of problems
that the city has to deal with and therefore look at the
city as a total unit. One has to have a comprehensive
planning perspective."
Eugenie Birch. Mayoral appointee.
Director and professor at Hunter
College's urban affairs and plan-
ning department. Co-editor of the
Journal of the American Planning
Association and writer on housing
and planning: "First and foremost,
New York is a world city and it
needs to maintain its homogeneity
as a world city. Yet at the same time
the planning commission has to make sure that it's a
city where its residents can live. "
Amanda Burden. City Council Presi-
dent appointee. Graduate student
in urban planning at Columbia Uni-
versity. Former vice president for
Battery Park City Authority and
state Urban Development Corpora-
tion: "I think the commission must
be responsi ve to community-based
planning. Secondly, the commis-
sion must build on the strength and
stability of residential areas and s t a b l ~ manufacturing
districts. And the commission has a responsibility to
perform long-term, comprehensive planning. "
22jNOVEMBER 1990jCrTY UMITS
$110,000 a year salary; the vice-chairman earns $27,000
annually and the other commissioners, $21,000.
For years, the board has been accused of being a plan-
ning commission in name only-rubber-stamping huge
development plans and ruling on arcane technical
matter while abdicating long-range planning to agen-
cies like the Public Development Corporation. City
Limits asked each new commissioner: "What is the role
of the commission in planning and shaping the future
of New York?"
AnthonyGiacobbe. Staten Island Bor-
ough President appointee. Lawyer.
Republican county committee
member. Former assistant counsel
to Assemblyman Robert Straniere
and community assistant to former
borough presidents Anthony Gaeta
and Ralph Lamberti. City council
member from 1978 to 1983: "[The
commission must] ensure that the
future development of the City of New York is done in
an orderly and intelligent way. [On Staten Island that
means] planning future growth while bearing in mind
the rural character of the borough."
Maxine Griffith. Mayoral appointee.
Architectural consultant. Former
project consultant for Harlem Ur-
ban Development Corporation' s
Harlem on the Hudson proposal
and consultant to Queens commu-
nity board on Arverne project. Dink-
ins' planning aide when he was
Manhattan borough president: "I
think it's very important for the
commission to foster an open process and listen, and I
think both substance and perception are important. Not
just listening is important, but also translating what we
hear into changes, modifications and proactive action
around the projects that come before us."
James Jao. Mayoral appointee.
Architect and chief executive offi-
cer of Long Island Design Collabo-
rative/James Jao Architects.
Director of New York Society of
Architects, member American In-
stitute of Architects and founding
president of Chinese-American De-
signers Association: "I think the
role is to assist the mayor and each
toward planning. Schaffer rattles off the thousands of
applications from street closings to curb cuts that seize
the panel's time. But he hopes to eventually add staff to
local offices and to shift some focus to the overall
question of "how you build communities." He is, after
all, the first planner to head the commission.
"I came here to do planning" he says. "It's probably
borough president to carry out better planning with the
charter .. .1 think the City Planning commission should
not be a political arm of any politician. It should be au-
thoritative and independent enough to make decisions
that will benefit every New Yorker."
Brenda Levin. Manhattan Borough
President appointee. Community
acti vist and professional fundraiser
and events planner for nonprofit
groups and Democrats including
Manhattan Borough President Ruth
Messinger, Comptroller Elizabeth
Holtzman, City Council President
Andrew Stein, council members
Robert Dryfoos and Ronnie Eld-
ridge, Vermont Governor Madeline Kunin and Califor-
nia gubernatorial candidate Diane Feinstein. Former
chairperson of Community Board 6 land use commit-
tee: "I think the commission should plan, not react; that
we should be setting a tone and creating a vision that
will enhance and protect the fabric and spirit of New
York."
Joel Miele, Sr. Queens Borough Presi-
dent appointee. Engineer for Miele
Associates, a family-run engineer-
ing and architectural firm. Presi-
dent, Ozone-Howard Beach Cham-
berofCommerce. Served three years
of active duty, 29 years inactive
duty in Naval Civil Engineering
Corps. Former chairman Commu-
nity Board 10: "The key is to couch
and shape the future of the city. Whatever that means
depends on what comes before us in terms of testimony
and data and our own backgrounds and history."
Edward Rogowsky. Brooklyn Borough
President appointee. Director ofUr-
ban Studies/Internship Program
and Graduate Center for Worker
Education at Brookl yn College. Past
director of Brook I yn Borough Presi-
dent Howard Golden's community
board office. Board member of
Brooklyn Navy Yard Development
Corporation. Former member Com-
munity Board 14. Founding member Flatbush Develop-
ment Corporation: "I think there is a role in revitalizing
the place of planning in the role it plays in the city .. .
We have a responsibility to make this process coherent
and to assert our role in this regard."
about the only logical reason anybody could come up for
selecting me as chairman of the City Planning Commis-
sion. I'm a planner.
"And that's what I intend to do." 0
Eve Heyn is a freelance reporter who writes frequently
for City Limits.
Ronald Shiffman. Mayoral appointee.
Director of the Pratt Institute Cen-
ter for Community and Environ-
mental Develorment, which pro-
vides technica and planning as-
sistance to low income communi-
ties. Former board member of City
Limits, the Urban Homesteading
Assistance Board and the Com-
munity Service Society of New
York. "One of our major issues is to try to bring equity
into the planning process and to try to invigorate the
planning process which has been absent for too long in
this city."
Jacob Ward. Bronx Borough Presi-
dent appointee. Partner in firm
Domber & Ward, specializing in
housing and development. Former
first deputy commissioner of City
Rent and Rehabilitation Admini-
stration and from 1969 through
1984 member of Conciliation and
Appeals Board, which admini-
stered rent stabilization laws (both
agencies now defunct). Past member of the Temporary
State Commission on Rental Housing and the Mitchell-
Lama Task Force. Ward failed to return many calls from
City Limits.
Deborah Wright. Mayoral appointee.
Former executive director of
Community Partnership Develop-
ment Corporation, an affiliate of
the New York City Partnership and
marketing director of Towers on
the Park, a partnership condomin-
ium project in Harlem. Former in-
vestment banker at First Boston
Bank. Co-founder, African-
American Real Estate Professionals of New York: "I
think a couple of things that are most important are the
fair share provisions, because of the perception of
fairness and equity in how we approach planning
issues. Some elements of the community have not felt
that the process has been fair, and I think that's some-
thing we ought to address. Secondly, the boroughs
other than Manhattan require more focus than they
have historically." 0 Eve Heyn
All photographs except those of Griffith and Miele were
taken by F. M. Kearney.
t
By Eric Weinstock
Beware the Senator's
Trojan Rent Bill
stabilization statutes are set to ex-
pire next year. A politically polar-
ized state legislature makes renewal
of these laws more difficult each year.
In addition, the legislature is ex-
pected to be wrestling with several
other crucial housing issues: the
Mitchell-Lama buyout crisis, hous-
ing maintenance code enforcement
and housing court difficulties. Dur-
ing the political horse trading that
occurs at the end of every legislative
session, the Bruno bill adds another
wild card to the game.
M
ia Farrow lives in a rent-
controlled apartment. To
State Sen. Joseph Bruno (R-
Troy), she and other high-
income New Yorkers should be forced
to pay higher rents. This may sound
like a good idea, but New Yorkers
should be wary.
During the last session, Bruno in-
troduced legislation that would stop
rent regulation for any apartment
renting for $2,000 a month or more
once it became vacant. The bill would
also cut off rent regulation for any
apartment occupied by a household
with an income of more than
$100,000 annually. Playing the
populist, Bruno asks why should the
rich benefit from rent regulations
intended to protect the poor?
But this proposal is nothing less
than a wolf in lamb's clothing. What
the proponents of this bill want is to
sucker the legislature into an uncon-
stitutional amendment to the state's
rent-regulation laws. Then the entire
system can be dragged before the
Reagan-appointed U.S. Supreme
Court and be kicked off the books.
States Rights
States such as New York are al-
lowed to control prices during an
emergency in order to protect the
public welfare and to prevent price
gouging and profiteering. But states
do not have the right to set prices
according to income. Therefore, New
York's rent regulation is not based
upon a tenant's ability-or inabil-
ity-to pay higher rents. The lifting
City View is a fOTUm for opinion
and does not necessarily reflect
the views of City Limits.
of rent regulation for apartments
currently occupied by high-income
tenants would create a fatal link to
income for the entire system.
If the system was based on ability
to pay, the rents for most apartments
would plunge. The median income
of the city's 150,000 rent-controlled
households in 1986 (the
most recent year for which
figures are available) was
only $10,817-10werthan for
all other renter groups ex-
cept public housing tenants.
In 1986, nearly a quarter of
the city's 935,000 rent-stabi-
lized households had in-
comes below $10,000, and
some 40 percent had incomes
under $15,000.
Lost Breaks?
Most of New York's highest regu-
lated rents and many of its highest
income tenants live in buildings the
owner voluntarily placed under regu-
lation in order to qualify for Section
421A tax abatements. Buildings con-
structed after 1974 are not subject to
rent regulation unless developers opt
into tax or other public subsidy pro-
grams. Certainly these owners and
developers wouldn't want to lose
millions of dollars in tax breaks just
because their tenants are rich.
The state's rent-control and rent-
Tenants, who all too often rely on
their greater numbers rather than
strong activism, have not paid much
attention to the real estate industry's
ploys. Industry lobbyists will surely
point to a soft cooperative and lux-
ury rental market as another reason
the legislature should end rent-regu-
lation protection for upper income
tenants. With voters pressuring the
Democratic-controlled Assembly to
come up with legislation to halt the
Mitchell-Lama buyouts (which af-
fecthundreds of thousands of middle
and working class New Yorkers), the
Republican-dominated Senate will
likel y take a tough bargaining posi-
tion on expiring rent regulations.
Eliminating these regulations in
order to boost the rent bill for some
high-income New Y or kers is a politi-
cal scheme hatched by the real estate
industry-a kind of Trojan horse in
the guise of populist legislation, de-
li vered ironicall y by the senator from
Troy. Appearing to attack the rich,
the proposal to link rent regulation
to income is really a blow to New
York's poorest residents. 0
SUPPORT SERVICES FOR NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
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1:1"'*11;'1"'1;';' By Robert W. Snyder
Of Black and White
and Left and Right
"The Closest of Strangers: Liberal-
ism and the Politics of Race in New
York, " by Jim Sleeper, W. W. Norton
and CO.,1990, $21 .95, hardback.
O
n a night of soul searching
prompted by the YusufHawk-
ins murder, Brooklyn District
Attorney Charles Hynes ad-
dressed a Greenwich Village forum
on race relations. Hynes is probably
best known for prosecuting the
Howard Beach case, but many in the
audience-black and white-weren't
interested in that. Instead, they
wanted Hynes to make a confession.
They wanted him to admit that he is
a racist.
Why? Because in their analysis,
all whites-whether they know it or
not-are racists, and the beneficiar-
ies of racist privileges, who must ac-
knowledge that when they confront
the issue of race.
Hynes insisted that he is not a rac-
ist. He argues people shouldn't di-
vide New York into prejudiced whites
and their victims. The overwhelm-
ing majority of our citizens, he as-
serted, want to live together in peace
and mutual respect. New Yorkers of
all races , he said, should join and
isolate the minority of haters.
The discussion ended without re-
solving the impasse. Only one thing
was certain: somewhere else, on some
other night, after some other outrage,
the debate would resume.
When it does, it will be helpful if
at least some of the people in the
room will have read Jim Sleeper's
"The Closest of Strangers: Liberal-
ism and the Politics of Race in New
York"-not because it has all the
answers, but because it raises impor-
tant questions about politics and race
that cannot be ignored.
Blinders
According to Sleeper, broad and
sustained attacks on the very real
problems of racism and ethnic paro-
chialism are counterproductive.
Concentrating on them, he argues,
blinds people to the problems they
have in common, like crime, eco-
nomic inequities and housing short-
ages. In their attempts to identify
and attack white racists, Sleeper
argues, black leaders like Al Sharpton
use lies and distortions that poison
the prospect of cooperation between
the races-a cooperation that will
have to occur if blacks are to achieve
justice. When they draw a color line
across the political landscape, they
ignore the potential for a multi-ra-
cial progressive majority. By seeing
blacks' plight solely as the creation
of whites, Sleeper asserts, they deny
that blacks have any individual re-
sponsibility for their situation-or
the power to change it.
Instead of polarizing the races ,
Sleeper urges , liberals, leftists and
people of color should recognize the
power of interracial movements that
work for shared political and eco-
nomic goals. From the city's past, he
cites the left wing Popular Front ac-
tivism ofthe 1930s, the political ca-
reer of J. Raymond Jones, the "Har-
lem Fox" who extracted benefits and
concessions from the white estab-
lishment, and the integrationist phase
of the civil rights movement. From
today's New York, he recognized East
Brooklyn Congregations, the com-
munity organization best known for
spearheading the Nehemiah homes.
Hidden History
For Sleeper, these are all part of
the hidden history of race relations
in New York City. At all times, he
demands that New Yorkers embrace
a sense of "fair play" and "race tran-
scendent" politics. "The only way to
shed racism and tribalism," he writes,
"is for New Yorkers to address to-
gether those larger problems that
imperil the city and sow the seeds of
racism itself. Would that offended
working-class whites and working-
class blacks talked to one another,
away from the ministrations of elite
liberals, the trust fund left, and, for
that matter, right-wing talk-show
hosts."
It' s a complex and at times angry
argument , drawn from diverse
sources: left-wing historians, neo-
conservati ves, the African -American
essayists Shelby Steele, the demo-
cratic socialist writers of Dissent,
and Sleeper' s years in New York as a
teacher, political aide and journal-
ist. As such, it reflects the strengths
and weaknesses of its intellectual
lineage.
The book's history lessons are
deeply influenced by a Marxian sen-
sibility that sees the problems of race
as the product of economic inequi-
ties. Kill the inequalities of capital-
ism, according to this view, and racial
conflicts will become much more
manageable, maybe even disappear.
Perhaps, but the irrational persis-
tence of racism in American history
makes this view seem a bit optimis-
tic. Likewise, Sleeper's argument
that since the 17th century, "Blacks
in New York have been the victims of
whites' opportunism and indiffer-
ence more than of their overt hatred
and outright physical violence" is a
very generous interpretation of the
city's long history of interracial
conflict.
From neo-conservatives and left-
ists both, he adopts a tendency to see
much of recent liberalism as an elit-
ist swindle perpetrated by a new
class of advocates, attorneys and
policy analysts. Although there is
something to this argument, he paints
it with a very broad brush. Sleeper
makes much of blacks' responsibil-
ity to break the cycle of both their
victimization and distorted racial
politics. But he is less forceful on
individual responsibility when he
writes about ethnic whites, who he
often sees as not so much wrong on
race as beleaguered and ignored.
"The Closest of Strangers" is a
heartfelt book, but at times the emo-
tions that give it power hit a sour
note. Too often, Sleeper uses phrases
like "elite liberals" and "black com-
munal seizures masquerading as
struggles for social justice. "
This is regrettable, because it may
turn off the very people Sleeper wants
to reach: liberals, leftists, and blacks
who he is convinced have taken the
wrong road. Sharp words to erode
the common ground he wants us to
stand on, but ultimately Sleepers call
for a class-based politics that tran-
scends racial divisions is worth tak-
ing seriously. "The Closest of Strang-
ers" may be a hard book to swallow,
but it is much too important to ignore.
Robert W. Snyder is a visiting assis-
tant professor of history at Rutgers
University. He has written and lec-
tured widely on the history of New
York City.
CRY UMITS/NOVEMBER 1990/25
PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY
Barry K. Mallin
Attorney At Law
A decade of service representing
community development organizations
and low income cooperatives.
56 Thomas Street
New York, N.Y. 10013
Telephone 212/619-6800
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-Profit Law
Title and loan closings 0 All city housing programs
Mutual housing associations 0 Coopertive conversions
Advice to low income co-op boards Of directors
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For a free estimate call Sarah Babb at (212) 864-5109
ASHOK MENON
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Specializing in representation of co-op boards
co-op, condo & house closings commercial leases
purchase & sale of business & professional practices
wills & probates business immigrant visas
875 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 1500
New York, NY
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SMOLLENS and GURALNICK,
COUNSELLORS AT LAW
Specializing in representing tenants only in
landlord/tenant proceedings, cooperative
conversions, loft proceedings. We represent
sellers/buyers in house, condo and co-op closings.
15 Maiden Lane, Suite 1800
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329 Flatbush Avenue
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217
Rebecca Reich
718/857 -0468
WORKSHOP
HOUSING DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST. Neighborhood organization
seeks specialist with 2 years exp, low income housing develop-
ment for project coordination/construction management; familiar
with HPD/ DHCR loan programs; negotiating, financial packaging,
computer, writing skills. Salary: to $35K. Resume to: Barbara
Lowry, Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, 549-559
West 180th Street, 2nd Fir, NYC 10033.
CASE MANAGER. Upper Manhattan housing/social service organi-
zation seeks BSW or equivalent BA for homeless families reloca-
tion program; bilingual , Spanish/English; case management,
counseling, advocacy, housing placement. Salary commensurate
with expo Resume: Barbara Lowry, Northern Manhattan Improve-
ment Corporation, 549-559 West 180th Street, 2nd Fir, NYC
10033.
EXECUTIVE EDITOR. New Jersey housing association seeks exp &
talented individual to produce practical monthly report, HOUSING
NEW JERSEY, detailing housing-related activity in NJ for housing
advocates, practitioners & developers. Bachelor'S & effective
writing & editing skills; supervisory exp preferred; knowledge of
publications production; housing background desirable. Salary
negotiable. Resume: Director of Publications and Advertising,
New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, Newark,
NJ 07102. Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.
HOUSING COUNSELOR. To assist lowl/moderate income employees
of major NY firms find housing; special program of nonprofit Open
Housing Center. Familiarity with neighborhoods in all boroughs,
knowledge of rent laws, private & subsidized housing essential ;
interviewing skills, good phone manner. PC & word processing
(Word Perfect) exp helpful. Convenient Manhattan location. Sal-
ary negotiable. Call Tom Tuthill , 212-941 -6101 .
SOCIAL WORK
Tenant support project seeks Community Organizer
and Caseworker for comprehensive, on-site services
to formerly homeless families now in HPD owned,
permanent housing. Organize tenants, link to social
services and develop programs designed to reduce
recidivism into shelter system.
Three years of experience or educational equivalent
required. BAlMSW and/or Spqnish speaking preferred.
We offer a competitive salary and benefits package.
Send resume to:
D. Sloss.
New York City
Department of Housing Preservation
& Development
75 Maiden Lane, Room 914
New York, NY 10038
Equal Opportunity Employer
NYC Residency Required
The Department encourages women and minorities
to apply.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZER. To build grassroots community anti-crime
coalition & organize tenants in Inwood. Atriculate, assertive, able
to communicate effectively. Organizing exp, fluent Spanish, Eng-
lish a must. Knowledge of housing laws, regs & court proceedings
preferred. $24K + health. TENANT ADVOCATE. Work with walk-in
clients on individual cases having to do with landlord/tenant
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47 Sickles Street, NYC 10040.
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HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAM
Chemical Bank is pleased to announce the winners of this year's Housing Opportunities Program (HOP) grants. The winners
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CITYWIDE
Community Development Legal Assistance Center
Consumer-Farmer Foundation
Habitat For Humanity, New York City
Local Initiatives Support Corporation
Neighborhood Housing Services Of New York City
Settlement Housing Fund
BRONX
Aquinas Housing Corporation
Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association
Bronx United In Leveraging Dollars
Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation
MBD Community Housing Corporation
Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council
Mount Hope Housing Company
Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition
West Bronx Housing & Neighborhood Resource Center
BROOKLYN
Astella Development Company
BEC New Communities HDFC
Bushwick Information Coordinating & Action Committee
Cypress Hills LDC
East New York Urban Youth Corps
Fifth Avenue Committee
Flatbush Development Corporation
Mutual Housing Association Of New York
Pratt Area Community Council
Pratt Institute Center For Community & Environmental
Development
Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council
Southside United Housing Development Fund Corp.
S!. Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation Corp.
MANHATTAN
Asian Americans For Equality
Clinton Housing Development Company
Cooper Square Committee
East Harlem Churches & Community Urban Center
Ecumenical Community Development Organization
Harlem Restoration Project
Hope Community
Housing Conservation Coordinators
Lower East Side Coalition Housing Development Corp.
Lower East Side Mutual Housing Association
Manhattan Valley Development Corp.
Pueblo Nuevo Housing & Development Association
RAIN Community Land Trust
West Harlem Community Organization
West Harlem Group Assistance
West Side Federation For Seniors
Youth Action Homes
QUEENS
Allen AME Neighborhood Preservation & Development Corp.
Greater Jamaica Development Corp.
Jamaica Apartment Improvement Program
Star Of The Sea
STATEN ISLAND
Community Agency For Senior Citizens
Project Hospitality
LONG ISLAND
Bellport, Hagerman, East Patchogue Alliance
Interfaith Nutrition Network
Nassau-Suffolk Coalition For The Homeless
Wyandanch Homes & Property Development Corp.
WESTCHESTER
Apropos Housing Opportunities & Management Enterprises
Housing Action Council
Housing And Neighborhood Development Institute
Interfaith Council For Action
Preservation Co. Of The Peekskill Area Health Center
Washingtonville Housing Alliance
Westchester Housing Fund .
Westhab Foundation
Yonkers Apartment Improvement Program
CI-EMICALBAN<
Housing Opportunities Program
"Helping Community Groups Respond To The Critical Shortage Of Low Income Housing"

City Limits Magazine, November 1990 Issue

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City Limits Magazine, November 1990 Issue

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November 1990 New York's Community Affairs News Magazine

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