NOnMB[R 1991

$1.00
Poverty=Endangerment?
P
arents have been arrested this year in New York City on child neglect
charges like never before. Misdemeanor child endangerment arrests are up
60 percent since 1995. And the number of children removed from their fami-
lies by child welfare officials skyrocketed 25 percent in the 12 months ending last
June compared to the previous year.
... -....... ~ ... ".- .
As we reported in our August/September cover story, some
mothers have been arrested based on unsubstantiated reports
filed by estranged and abusive husbands and boyfriends.
Remarkably, other mothers have been arrested and had their
children taken away because they were too poor to afford a
decent place to live.
EDITORIAL
Are these legitimate grounds for breaking up families,
dragging parents through the criminal justice system-and
spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars per child on
foster care placements?
Apparently yes, as far as the Giuliani administration is concerned. The city has
shifted its handling of abuse and neglect cases to include up-front arrests and deten-
tion-and removal of children- before investigations have been carried out and alle-
gations have been substantiated.
Of course proven abusers who have caused serious harm to their children deserve
prosecution and punishment. But too frequently the people dragged into court do not
fit this profile. One indication can be found in state statistics, which show that nearly
onejourth of the children removed from their parents by child welfare officials in one
month (last February is the most recent data available) were returned home within 90
days-a rate nearly double that of early 1996. Experts say such a resolution occurs
most often because the removal was not justifiable in court.
In an October follow-up to our story in The New York Times, writer Rachel
Swarns quotes Police Commissioner Howard Safir: "The fact is that even if we make
a mistake in an intervention, that's a mistake that doesn't really harm a child. "
Huh? Is Safir truly oblivious to the fact that young children unnecessarily
snatched from their parents' protection suffer extreme emotional trauma?
Editorial writers at the city's tabloids would likely say, "Better safe than sorry." It's
afalse argument. Unsubstantiated arrests and inappropriate removal of children are
severely abusive practices in and of themselves. They are not benign, protective actions.
The administration needs to learn how to provide important child protection ser-
vices effectively without punishing functional families simply because they are poor or
need help finding a decent place to live. The very programs designed to help these
families-community-based foster-care prevention programs-are severely short of
resources even as the city spends millions of extra dollars on new child removals and
short-term foster-care placements.
The Child Welfare Watch project affiliated with the Center for an Urban Future,
City Limits' sister organization, will hold a public forum to discuss these issues on
Tuesday, November 25 from 9 a.m. to Jl :30 a.m. at the CUNY television studio, 33
West 42nd Street, 3rdfloor. To attend, you must RSVP to (212) 479-3345.
Andrew White
Editor
City Limits relies on the generous support of its readers and advertisers, as well as the following funders: The Robert Sterling Clark
Foundation, The Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, The Joyce Mertz-
Gilmore Foundation, The Scherman Foundation, The North Star Fund, J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated, The Booth Ferris Foundation,
The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The New York Foundation. The Taconic Foundation, M& T Bank, Citibank. and Chase Manhattan Bank.
~ ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(ity Limits
Volume XXII Number 9
City Limits is published ten times per year. monthly except
bi-monthly issues in June/July and August/September, by
the City Limits Community Information Service, Inc .. a non-
profit organization devoted to disseminating information
concerning neighborhood revitalization.
Editor. Andrew White
Senior Editors: Kim Nauer, Glenn Thrush
Managing Editor. Carl Vogel
Associate Editor. Kemba Johnson
Contributing Editor. James Bradley
Interns: Joe Gould. Jason Stipp
Design Direction: James Conrad, Paul V. Leone
Advertising Representative: Faith Wiggins
Proofreader: Sandy Socolar
Photographers: Melissa Cooperman. Dietmar Liz-Lepiorz.
Mayita Mendez
Associate Director,
Center for an Urban Future: Neil Kleiman
Board of Directors*:
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the Publ ic Interest
Beverly Cheuvront, Girl Scout Council of Greater NY
Shawn Dove, Rheedlen Centers
Francine Justa, Neighborhood Housing Services
Errol Louis
Rebecca Reich. LlSC
Andrew Reicher, UHAB
Tom Robbins. Journalist
Celia Irvine. ANHD
Pete Williams. National Urban League
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and Environmental Development
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CITVLlMITS
1
~
I '
NOVEMBER 1997
FEATURES
AI Vann and the Revolution. Unplugged. ~
Twenty years ago, Assemblyman Al Vann promised to lead a grand coalition
of blacks and Puerto Ricans that would run the city right-from the left.
Now he's lucky to hold onto a diminishing Bed-Stuy power base, and a united,
powerful black Brooklyn is once again just a dream. By Ron Howell
Anatomy of a Sweetheart Deal ~
The Jose de Diego Beekman Houses in Mott Haven has been a sweetheart to
everybody---except its besieged tenants. Billionaires like Bob Tisch made it a
quiet hideaway for tax shelter cash. Murdering drug gangs like the Wild Cowboys
made it their hole in the wall. Now its tenants are creating a bailout that may be
the model for hundreds of similar projects across the country. It also happens to
help out a high-powered Clinton fundraiser. By Kim Nauer
PIPELINES
Central Holding ~
Alternative-to-incarceration programs reform criminals, save money and
open up prison cells for more dangerous felons. So why has the city created
a new screening process? By SashaAbramsky
Courting Calamity ~
The tenants supposedly won the rent wars last summer. But a pair of
landlord-bonanza Housing Court laws whisked quietly through Albany could
result in 33,000 new evictions next year. By Glenn Thrush
Finding Factory Funding ~
Investment from the city's municipal and union pension funds could help
spark a revival of New York's beleaguered manufacturing base, but try telling
that to City Hall. By Chris Seymour
Lone Ranger No More
For decades the Regional Plan Association padded the corridors of power
and flexed muscle for its sweeping visions of regional development. But now the
group must court communities if it wants to see its latest plan take wing.
Review
To Market, To Market?
Spare Change
Fly, Dodo, Fly
Editorial
Letters
COMMENTARY
DEPARTMENTS
2 Vita I Stats
4 Ammo
By Michael Hirsch
132
By John E. Seley
138
By Glenn Thrush
34
35
Briefs 5-7 Professional Directory 36
Supplanting ACORN; Housing Off-Line;
Bad Banking; Water Fight Job Ads 37-39

a
Crlm. and th. Housing
Solution
me in 1980). Rosenberg hooked up with
Katkin, who knew his way around housing
subsidies, to do Section 8 deals in Crown
Heights at a time when Katkin, a former
plumber and Municipal Loan Program
deadbeat, was under investigation for
arson.
LETTERS
Congratulations 'to Andrew White,
whose recounting of the fmancial manipu-
lations of the white-collar predators
behind the Medgar Evers housing devel-
opment ("Sweet Victory," October 1997)
was in the great tradition of City Limits
founder Bob Schur.
Bald copped an arson plea and turned
in Katkin who was convicted at trial.
Neither Wallach nor Rosenberg were ever
charged and there's no evidence they did
anything other than legitimate business
with low-lifes. But the fact that both men
could waltz the multimillion dollar
Medgar Evers housing deal through HUD
in 1985, just one year after the Bald arson
trials were completed, shows that there is
tougher screening for tenants of subsidized
housing than for owners and investors.
-
,M
Schur enraged an entire administration
by exposing-in this magazine's pages-
the profiteering of Richard Ravitch and
his investor, cosmetics tycoon Estee
Lauder, in the construction and marketing
of Manhattan Plaza in the late I 970s. The
Medgar Evers profiteers are somewhat
more obscure, except in HUD's back cor-
ridors.
Gilbert Wallach, investor/owner/attor-
ney for the pack that milked the Evers
development, is the same fine legal mind
who represented landlord-arsonists Joe
Bald and Henry Katkin in obtaining tax
syndication proceeds from federal rehabs
of buildings they had torched while still
occupied. Phil Rosenberg, another Medgar
Evers opportunist, was the housing man-
ager and developer who used to call him-
self "Progressive Management," ("It's a
reflection of our politics," Rosenberg told
For.st for th. YrHs
Tom Robbins
Brooklyn
Any review of my book "Wall Street"
is better than none ("Bare Markets,"
October 1997), but to complain that
there's nothing in it for an activist that
helps him with his work is to miss the
whole damn point. Too many activists are
NORTH STAR FUND
1997 FREDERICK
DOUGLASS AWARDS
Celebrating the 150th Anniversary
of the founding of Frederick Douglass' anti-slavery
newspaper, The North Star.
Join us on Thursday, November 20, 1997!
1997 HONOREES:
City Limits Juan Gonzalez
Dr. Manning Marable Susan Meiselas
Monthly Review Press
To place a congratulatory ad in the journal
and! or to purchase tickets, please call
(212) 620-9110.
so focused on specific issues at specific
moments that they can't think how all the
pieces fit together. For someone working
on income polarization and excessive
wealth, a detailed understanding of how
financial markets work-and how fmance
is connected to the social mechanisms of
power-is absolutely essential. An
"activist" who doesn't have this under-
standing will always fight losing battles
against forces who understand quite well
how things fit together.
Oh well, can't have everything.
Aw,Shucks
Doug Henwood
Manhattan
Just wanted you to know how much I
enjoy City Limits. Even as a monthly it has
better NYC news than the dailies. The arti-
cles are well researched and well written.
Nice graphics too. I teach as an adjunct at
the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing,
and I'll be sure to make those students
aware of City Limits.
Wat.rHol.
Betsy Todd
The Bronx
How did the HDFC Coalition, a group
of low-income housing co-ops, get
dropped from your water piece ("H
2
0we,"
October 1997)? Archie McDaniels, whom
the story opened with, is a founding board
member of the organization.
In 1995 New York state wanted to cut
water safeguards, which would cause $8
billion in filtration and higher rates; we
fought it. The mayor wanted to sell the
water system and have us pay for it in our
rates. David Ferguson, also of the coali-
tion, got 70 housing organizations to join
environmental organizations for the first
time. This caused Comptroller Alan
Hevesi to weigh in and veto the bond sale.
David is tireless in this.
We appreciate your coverage of the
issue, but please give us some credit for
getting stuff done-like keeping the rates
from increasing 100 to 150 percent.
Jared Goldstein
HDFC Coalition
Editor's R.ply: Our sincere apolo-
gies. The HDFC Coalition was a key
resource in our reporting of the story, and
their work is at the very core of organizing
around the issue of high water rates.
Sorry to say that in a last-minute editing
mistake, we managed to slice their name
out of the story.
CITY LIMITS
Monprofits
Supplanting ACORN
D
id a housing group's chide transform
Mayor Giuliani into Mr. Hyde? The
head of ACORN's housing develop-
ment group says the Giuliani admin-
istration has unexpectedly pulled out
of two multimillion dollar projects it had agreed
to fund because the controversial organizing
group jeered Mayor Giuliani at a housing confer-
ence this summer.
In recent months, officials at the city's
Department of Housing Preservation and
Development had been working out logistics
with New York ACORN Housing Company and
its sister organization, the Mutual Housing
Association of New York (MHANY), for the $6
million Neighborhood Redevelopment Program
in Washington Heights and a $2.5 million stake
NOVEMBER 1997
in the new Neighborhood Homes first-time
homebuyers project. When ACORN's top devel-
opment staffer, Ismene SpeLiotis, asked for a
status report in mid-September, however, offi-
cials told her the organization had been kicked
off the projects.
According to Speliotis, the officials said the
severance was purely political: ACORN members'
chants of "Housing for the needy, not for the
greedy!" had interrupted Mayor Giuliani 's speech
before a national conference of development offi-
cials on July 25. "The people from the city told
me, 'We' ve been told not to do any more business
with you,'" Speliotis says. "We were given no
other reason apart from our organizing activity.
This is completely not fair."
Jack Deacy, the mayor's deputy press secre-
tary, says Giuliani would not make such a unilat-
eral decision. ''The mayor doesn' t cancel con-
tracts. There has to be a reason why," he main-
tains. "In general, it sounds ludicrous." Press rep-
resentatives at HPD did not return messages.
But housing advocates contend that this
administration gives the impression that threats
to take away housing contracts are not idle ones.
"Since Giuliani became mayor, it's very clear
that the cost of criticizing the administration has
increased," says Jay Small, executive director of
the Association for Neighborhood and Housing
Development, Inc. "It's their intention [to scare
groups away from criticism]. It may actually
have that effect."
ACORN has been organizing aggressively dur-
ing the past year around workfare and housing.
Their actions helped force New York City Housing
Authority Chairman Ruben Franco to withdraw an
application to the federal government seeking per-
mission to move a greater number of working-
class tenants into housing projects previously
reserved for the poorest applicants.
-Glenn Thrush and Kemba Johnson
Briem ............ ------........ --------------=
Public Information
Housing Off-Line
4.
computer "one-stop shop" with data
from five different city agencies for
every residential building in New
York City-including the number of
code violations and whether or not
the building is in tax arrears-may never be
released to the community groups for which it
was created. The city's Department of Housing
Preservation and Development (HPD) has found
funding for an in-house version of the program,
but won't say whether backing will be forthcom-
ing for the public model.
The program is part of a housing early warn-
ing system designed to help HPD intervene with
landlords before buildings are abandoned.
University researchers have been working since
1995 with a private foundation grant to create
both an abandonment predictor model and the
one-stop data warehouse. "We spent nine
months just meeting with agencies and dealing
with data dictionaries," says one of the project's
architects, Dennis Culhane of the University of
Pennsylvania's School of Social Work. "We
held three focus groups with eight to 10 com-
munity groups about how people use informa-
tion and what information they want, what
makes their job easier."
The academics delivered the systems to HPD
several months ago, but the first glimpse of the pro-
jects given to community groups was at an October
21 meeting. The city has already tested the predic-
tor model in a section of the Bronx and is working
out the kinks in their in-house version of
Mo'Peace
the data warehouse. Many at the meeting
were less than enthused about the HPD
Environment
predictor. "You still have to go physically look at a
building, even if you pull it up on a computer," says
Wendy Sanchez from the Kingsbridge Riverdale
VanCortlandt Development Corporation. 'The data
warehouse sounds absolutely great, though, if it
actually goes out to us."
But HPD won't say if the community-accessi-
ble version will ever see the light of day. "We'll
decide in the next quarter," says Gabriel Bartell,
the director of management reporting for the
agency's Division of Anti-Abandonment, who
cites the expense of getting a system up and run-
ning as the reason for the delayed decision.
''I' m concerned that the program is in a vacu-
um at the moment," says Victor Bach of the
Community Service Society. ''We need to have a
way to have a dialog with the city and help make
sure this happens." Some activists say the city is
crying poverty because they have little interest in
getting housing information to community
groups. "It's a question of accountability-any-
thing that makes code enforcement public and
subject to scrutiny is suspect," says Andrew
Goldberg, an attorney with MFY Legal Services.
"They want this like the plague." -Carl Vogel
Water Fight
Standing in front of Cardinal O'Connor's holDfl, tenant activists
protest eviction from a Catholic Archdiocese-affiliated women's
reSidence, the Leo House Annex.
O
ne of the state's most
respected environmental-
ists has issued a scathing
report that questions the
city's ability to safeguard
its water supply. In a 62-page report,
"A Culture of Mismanagement,"
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of the Hudson
Riverkeeper Fund paints a picture of an
ineffective city Department of
Environmental Protection (DEP).
The report, which was prepared a
year ago and was obtained by City
Limits in September, offers a startling
glimpse into DEP's dysfunction, draw-
ing information from meetings, internal
memos and interviews with agency offi-
cials. "The DEP's institutional culture is
intensely antagonistic toward a strong
independent enforcement effort that
might interfere with cozy relationships
between district engineers and local
developers and political leaders,"
Kennedy writes.
According to the document, apathy
within the agency poses serious threats
to water quality. For example, in June
1996, the DEP closed down a building
with an illegal sewer pipe months after
the problem had been brought to the
attention of an agency official. Most
damning of all, the report shows that many of the
managers in charge of critiquing development in
the upstate watershed are not trained for the task.
"With DEP AWOL," the report reads, "the devel-
oper's version of science and events often stands
unchallenged. "
In a three-page response to the Riverkeeper
report dated October 2, DEP Commissioner Joel
Miele wrote, "DEP has been vigorously protect-
ing its watershed ... .ln fact, DEP has 55 positions
in its water supply police department, with 45
police officers who regularly patrol the reservoirs
and watersheds." He also defends DEP's decision
to work with corporate polluters instead of pun-
ishing them "whenever facilities may temporally
fail to operate perfectly."
The Miele missive "seems deliberately disin-
genuous," Kennedy says. "Of the 45 officers cited
by the Commissioner, nine are still in the police
academy while 33 of the remaining 36 are detailed
for gatehouse security and are not involved in pol-
lution patrol." He adds that, according to an inter-
n a DEP report on upstate sewage treatment facil-
ities, the agency's leniency program is flawed: "Of
the 70 plants in [DEP's own] report, 29 (41 %)
exhibited chronic discharge problems that went
unabated for at least three years." Kennedy hopes
he will have enough information on the agency to
release a report twice a year called, "Inside DEP,"
with a first issue due out next month.
-Kemba Johnson
CITY LIMITS
...... ----------.. -----------------Briem
.,,'
r: ., ,.-- _. ...- -
Lending
BadBanking
B
rooklyn Congressman Charles
Schumer's recent study on local
banks' minority lending practices
contains one big surprise: Schumer
singles out GreenPoint Bank for hav-
ing the best minority lending record of any New
York bank. In fact, City Limits has learned that the
New York State Banking Department is investi-
gating the bank for allegedly engaging in a high-
risk loan policy that leads to excessive foreclo-
sures and hurts low-income tenants.
At issue is GreenPoint's long-standing policy of
offering loans with high down payments and steep
up-front fees-without asking applicants to submit
extensive credit histories or provide documentation.
Last year, the Fifth Avenue Committee random-
ly surveyed 18 buildings that GreenPoint had lent to
in Brooklyn and found that 11 of the landlords had
taken out higher loans than they could afford to
repay. 'They were significantly overleveraged,"
says Brad Lander, FAC's executive director. ''In
order to deal with high payments, landlords must try
to increase their income by raising rents or by defer-
ring maintenance. Either way it hurts the tenants."
GreenPoint officials maintain that an internal
1995 study proves their lending has been helpful to
NOVEMBER 1997
communities. "We found that only five of our build-
ings out of thousands had had multiple foreclosures.
Four were in Long Island and only one was in
Brooklyn," says Harold Bluver, an attorney for
GreenPoint, who adds that a recent meeting with
state investigators "completely vindicated" the bank.
"He's a Liar," counters Lander, who attended the
meeting. "I believe that the preliminary informa-
tion presented by the banking department substan-
tially confirms our allegations."-loe Gould
CommunilyCardens DAY IN COURT
T
he state Supreme CoIrt last month ruled against a year-old
citywide network seekiJg to preserve 400 COImIity gardens-and iI favor of officials who lant to deyelop hoosing
on seyeral of the city-owned The case has IIOIlOOyoo to the state COII't's AppeIate 1IiYision.
The city's 00usiJg department and the New York City HoosiIg Partnership have pIamed a 98-tmit condo on the sites of
four Lower East Side gardens. To sW the bulldozers, the New York City Coalition for the Preserntion of Gardens !Wagged the
city and the partners/JqI iIto state _ Court.
But Judge Jeffrey Atlas Met! agaiJst the coaitDJ, i11is decisioo that the constrootioo nwet1.ced IMxJsiJg that
had been 00 the site before. In its ., the " ataiIs that construcOOn 00 garden land across the city has a trenJeIMbJs
envi'OIInentaI m.act.
The aweaI has nJjr COOS8IJ8Il8S for the city's 12-yeaHi1 New Hm . 1men\tJ, as Im1IY as half of the city's COOl-
nuity grim are tIreDBI by _ llsplMld" lklv., the Iiy has WWd itsIf an
from its OlD_ted and tine-GOOSIIIiJg IJIiform I.aJKI Use and Review Promre ""'" COIIIIUity
"1IJmmIy tIis is a massive att. to bypass _ says Legal Aid attny David IU, who is
the coaitDJ. "Yoo can't _ the enviomJentaI by kIokiJg at each IM'IIiect [aroood the city] one at a tine."
ff the coalition 1iIs, the city may have to get a UWRP review of past plans that affect ..my gardens and look at
fubre plans for thei' CORJ,WebensiYe effect-wIidJ garden-IoYers hope iii delay coostruction 01' force the city to select a1tema-
live sites. "We don't lant to stop new and Ie don't lant to stop new housing," says Anastasia PardaIis, jWOject
d'rector for the coalition. "What Ie rut is to slow the process so Ie can have a.e city pIaming.n -KeniJa JoIr1son

F
Central Holding
, City Hall has centralized control over alternatives-to-incarceration programs.
PIPEliNE
So far, the new system has left hundreds of offenders in the lock-up. By Sasha Abramsky
i
Re-arrest rates are
lower for offenders
sentenced to
alternatives to
,
incarceration. Only
3 J percent of the
participants in
CASES's Community
Employment Project
(CEP) were rear-
rested within two
years of their sen-
tencing.
j
udge Burton Roberts, Admin-
istrative Judge for the Bronx
Supreme Court, is worried. Over
the summer, the city centralized a
major piece of its alternative-to-
incarceration (ATO system, which releases
criminals from detention centers to the
supervision of nonprofit programs. For
nearly two decades, court representatives
employed by the ATI programs have dis-
cussed individual cases directly with
judges, sharing insight, building trust and
designing individualized rehabilitation
plans. Since the beginning of July, howev-
er, a new central office, the Central Court
Screening Service, has taken charge of
picking and choosing who will get an
opportunity to take part in the alternative
programs and who will go to prison.
"In a certain sense, [the old system 1
was better," Roberts states carefully. "We
were able to deal with the court reps,
impose on the individuals certain restric-
tions. That is eliminated now." He adds
that without these individual relationships,
he has grown more wary of the system.
Even the centralized system's biggest
proponents concede that the change-over
has stumbled out of the blocks. At least in
the short term, it has also cost taxpayers
millions of dollars and deprived hundreds
of offenders a second chance.
ATIs are designed to work with men
and women who have been convicted of
either felonies or misdemeanors-but
whose profJ..!e suggests are willing to work
toward a constructive life on the outside.
Some programs put participants to work in
community service jobs, others serve up
intensive treatment programs to drug
abusers. One works with battered-but-vio-
lent women, another places juveniles in
structured learning environments. The
agency with the heaviest ATI caseload, the
Center for Alternative Sentencing and
Employment Services (CASES), had
2,600 participants last year in two separate
ATI programs.
ATIs both free up prison space for
more violent criminals and save tax dol-
lars: The programs typically cost less
than $10,000 per year per participant,
while a year in prison can cost $50,000
and up. It's not just about money, though.
CASES estimates that young people sen-
tenced to ATIs have a recidivism rate as
Ii ttle as one-half that of their peers incar-
cerated in state facilities (see "Cell's
Angels, " City Limits, February 1997).
As Roberts and other judges describe
the system, ATIs have been a tremendous
tool that gives judges the flexibility to
mete out tough sanctions while also pro-
moting successful rehabilitation strategies.
But the programs have to be completely
reliable-and their close interaction with
the courts made them that much more
trustworthy to judges who have no desire
to let an offender off with an easy sen-
tence.
Informal R.latlonshlps
Since 1982, both the city and the state
have funded most ATIs, which relied on
their informal relationships with judges to
build a caseload of participants appropri-
ate for each program. "I think trust has
been very important, especially as the
severity of the defendants' crimes goes
up," says Bart Lubow, who oversaw ATI
programs for the state of New York from
1984 to 1991 and now is a senior associate
with the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
"There are ATI systems in lots of
CEP 31%
Felony Arrests Within Two
Years of Sentence Date
Percent I.e-arrested
NYC Probation
--.... t Sentence
NYC Jail
NYSPrison
44%
First Year
Second Year
CITY LIMITS

places, but what makes New York's unique
is that it was created outside of the sys-
tem ... and so its base in nonprofit agencies
and among advocates introduced new
approaches," Lubow says. "The more
structure you introduce, the more bureau-
cratic it becomes, the more you lose what
was innovative. In this drive to do new
things, it's too early to tell if the differ-
ences will produce that kind of change."
Of course, squelching innovation isn't
the stated goal of the new system. "The
ATI programs each had a court rep and
did screening for clients, and we thought
it would be more efficient if those func-
tions were centralized," explains Martin
H. Becker of the city's Criminal Justice
Coordinator's Office, which oversees
ATI programs and their funding. "Also, it
seemed that the new system would give
us more oversight on getting information
on what was happening, and the informa-
tion could be reported in more standard
ways."
Last September, the coordinator's
office announced it was seeking an outside
agency to take responsibility for interact-
ing with judges and determining which
criminals were best suited for ATls. Only
one agency sent in a proposal-the
Criminal Justice Agency, an offshoot of
the respected Vera Institute, whose 1992
"Jail Population Management Consultancy
Report" argued for the creation of just
such a structure. The CJA was, according-
ly, awarded the contract to start up the
Central Court Screening Service. It will
also be crunching data reflecting recidi-
vism rates and other measurements of suc-
cess or failure--data heretofore available
only from the individual nonprofits.
The city then required each of the ATI
programs to apply for new contracts-
organized by separate classes of criminal,
the number in each category determined
by a quota system. "The city had notions
that certain defendants being incarcerated
could benefit from alternative programs,
and the attempt is being made to target
these more," Becker says. The new sys-
tem increases the emphasis on persistent
misdemeanor and non-violent drug
offenders: CASES is slated to nearly dou-
ble its caseload of such offenders, from
1,600 to 3,000.
A Chance to Work
On July I, 1997, the new system went
into effect. The six agencies running ATI
programs with the new screening service
are now supposed to work with a total of
4,200 participants each year, roughly the
same number from before the change. By
NOVEMBER 1997
Judges are now being asked to release criminals
from detention into the hands of agencies with
which they no longer have any dired con tad.
It isn't necessarily a tempting proposition
for judges wary of being labeled I ~ o f t on crime. "
and large, the ATI community accepts that
the system is a genuine attempt to promote
efficiency. "It's too young to really criti-
cize; we need to give it a chance to work,"
says Ken Bloomfield, the senior director in
charge of two ATI programs run by the
Fortune Society, both funded by Becker's
office.
But Bloomfield and other program
directors admit they are disappointed with
losing their court reps. In effect, judges are
now being asked to release criminals from
detention into the hands of agencies with
which they no longer have any direct con-
tact. It isn't necessarily a tempting propo-
sition for judges wary of being labeled
"soft on crime."
Joel Copperman, executive director of
CASES, agrees that the new court rep sys-
tem poses problems. "We had a greater
presence in the courts than any of the other
programs, and I believe that we to a greater
extent defined our work around the court
piece," he says. "CASES is concerned
about the attenuation of the relationships
between the program and the courts, and
whether judges will have the same confi-
dence in programs that they don't have
regular ongoing contact with."
But even more significant problems
have arisen during the system's launch.
"We anticipated using a computerized
targeting system. We were not in a posi-
tion [on July I] to make that computer
targeting system work," acknowledges
Executive Director Jerome McElroy of
the Criminal Justice Agency. Nor was
the organization ready to send its full
force of 42 court reps into the field; by
July, only 31 had been hired, and, of
these, ten had no previous experience as
court reps (the others were hired from
existing ATI programs). At press time,
the agency planned to hire the remaining
reps in November and was working on
"incremental" progress on its computer
system, which uses a new set of data to
help determine what sorts of offenders
are most likely to benefit from an ATI
program.
But the delays mean judges are placing
far fewer offenders in ATI programs.
According to the new quotas, CASES's
Community Employment Project should
have had approximately 250 referrals each
month since July. In fact, it has had an
average of only 45, only one-third the pace
of intakes one year ago-and well below
the new goal. What's more, CASES's
felony caseload in state Supreme Court is
supposed to be 25 a month-but it has
been averaging just over 12. The Youth
Advocacy Program, run by the Center for
Community Alternatives, is supposed to
receive 130 juvenile offenders each year,
or just over 10 per month. Yet in August,
according to Executive Director Marsha
Weissman, only three people were admit-
ted into YAP.
"I don't have current and reliable fig-
ures," McElroy concedes. "But I am sure
we are not identifying and referring cases
at the kind of numbers we would hope to
be referring in the next couple of months."
He argues it was inevitable that it would
take time to smooth out the wrinkles after
implementing changes on this scale.
Until the quotas are met, however,
potential participants are being sent to
prison, at up to five times the cost to the
taxpayer. As a conservative estimate, the
drop in caseload at just one of CASES's
programs translates into a loss to the tax-
payer of at least $3.6 million. And that
doesn't take into account the long-term
costs of more offenders returning to prison
as recidivism rates increase.
Clearly the new ATI system needs to
get up to speed, and soon. The players in
this saga hope that in the long run, these
problems will be overcome. But, as Judge
Roberts points out, it is possible that even
then judges will be less keen to place
defendants into the alternative-to-incar-
ceration programs. "Unless," he says
somberly, "McElroy is able to restore con-
fidence."
Sasha Abramsky is a Manhattan-based
freelance writer.
Judith Goldiner
has helped fashion
a legal defense
against the rent
deposit law that
may help tenants
who are on public
assistance.
I.M
Courting Calamity
Tenants thought they had won the rent wars. But two new anti-
tenant laws that hit Housing Court last month may rout the work-
ing poor and lead to thousands of evictions. By Glenn Thrush
T
he tenant assistance table at
Queens Housing Court is a
flimsy fold-up job that droops
in the middle from bearing too
many pounds of paperwork
heaped on it by too many evictable poor
people.
Considering what hit that table last
month, it's a wonder the legs haven't
buckled.
Beginning October 20th, the court
became more hospitable to landlords,
thanks, ironically, to the supposedly ten-
ant-friendly rent deal struck in Albany dur-
ing the summer. While the compromise
saved most protections for middle-income
tenants, the real price of the deal is about
to be paid by poor tenants dragged into
court by their landlords for nonpayment of
rent-the overwhelming majority of the
more than 300,000 cases heard by Housing
Court each year.
It will take a few months for the full
effects of the new law to be felt, but it
changes the fundamental balance of power
between landlords and tenants by requir-
ing tenants to deposit monthly rent pay-
ments with the court in order to argue their
cases before a judge. In the past, Housing
Court has been a place where tenants could
set up a payment plan or buy time to find
emergency help. The new law leaves many
who have lost a job, are facing a medical
crisis or are otherwise behind on their rent
exposed to immediate eviction. Legal
Services for New York estimates the num-
ber of evictions could more than double,
rising from 24,000 last year to more than
55,000 in 1998.
"Most tenants in Housing Court aren't
there because they've decided to withhold
their rent," says Angelita Anderson, the
executive director of the City-Wide Task
Force on Housing Court, the nonprofit
which runs the tenant advice tables. 'The
primary reason we have nonpayment cases
is because people can't afford their rents.
Those are the people that are going to be
evicted under this law."
Naturally, landlords contend it's only
fair that tenants pay their rent on time, and
that the law protects their property rights.
But however legitimate their claims,
Census Bureau statistics show that half of
all renters in New York City spend a third
or more of their household income on rent
alone-and 628,000 households have
incomes below the federal poverty line.
With a speedier eviction process, a new
tide of homelessness and overcrowding
may be just around the comer.
Anderson and other advocates say the
rent deposit rules will hurt all tenants, but
they believe the hardest hit will be the
working people in outerborough neighbor-
hoods who are too poor to afford their
rents-but have incomes high enough to
make them ineligible for welfare.
"Queens will be the worst," says Carl
Peterson, who runs that borough's table for
the task force. "Poor people throughout the
borough routinely pay $800, $900 in rent.
I can't envision anything happening other
than a whole lot of new evictions."
Working Poor
The week before the new law took
effect, Toshie, a 25-year-old home health
care worker who lives in Flushing, walked
up to the Queens table and asked for help.
Like 90 percent of the tenants who appear
before the court, she had no lawyer and not
much idea of how to payoff the $2,527.40
she owed. The tale she recounted to a City-
Wide Task Force volunteer echoed many
others at Queens Housing Court.
Toshie is a single, working mother
with an asthmatic son who pays more in
rent than she takes home in pay-her
salary is $532 a month; her rent comes to
$671. She wasn't always living so close to
the bone. Last year, she was working full
time and even made enough to send her
son to private day care. Then her father
died, saddling her with a $5,000 funeral
bill. Soon after, she was diagnosed with
cervical cancer and had to take a long
leave of absence from work. While the
operation was a success, it left her with a
host of medical bills. And she can now
work only part time, because her job
requires hard physical labor.
Still, she clings desperately to her
CITY LIMITS
safe, clean apartment where she has lived
for five years. '1 went to welfare," she
says, plopping her pile of papers on the
table, "and they told me I was making too
much [to be eligible for benefits]. I'm
looking for a better job, taking a comput-
er class, doing anything that will help me
make better money soon. It's an impossi-
ble situation. I'm trying to pay October
and it's November already. Once you get
behind, it's real hard to play catch-up."
To avoid eviction, she plans to borrow
cash from her mother while working out
a payment plan with her landlord.
But whatever her travails, Toshie is
lucky her case reached the court before the
new law took effect. If her landlord had
brought his case after October 20, Toshie
wouldn't have much leverage to negotiate
and almost certainly would have been
evicted before the end of the year.
ImmHlat. Eviction
Under the new system, after a tenant
in Toshie's straits requests two adjourn-
ments or within 30 days of the case being
brought, whichever comes first, the judge
must order her to start paying current rent
into an escrow account. If she cannot pay,
her landlord can legally press for an
immediate eviction. The judge would
have no choice but to grant it.
Working people facing judgments for
nonpayment can usually apply for an
Emergency Assistance to Families grant
from the city Human Resources
Administration (lIRA), a so-called "one
shot." For those on public assistance, the
best option is a court-ordered "Jiggetts
rent supplement," which provides a large
lump sum for back rent payments along
with ongoing rent supplements. But even
these benefits may not be enough to pre-
vent eviction under the new system.
That's because one shots typically take
45 days to process, and a Jiggetts supple-
ment often leaves tenants and landlords
cooling their heels for three months before
either of them sees a penny. Yet the new
law requires a tenant pay back rent or
vacate the apartment five days after a
judge's order to deposit rent. 1n the past, a
judge who knew government pay-outs
were forthcoming would typically give a
tenant a stay in their evictions. Those days
are now officially over.
"When I read the rent deposit stuff I
was disturbed, but when I read the five-
day provision I got really pissed off," says
Scott Sommer of the Metropolitan Council
on Housing. "This is the real grand slam
for landlords. " Sommer, who has conduct-
ed information seminars on the new tenant
NOVEMBER 1997

liThe primary reason we have nonpayment
cases is because people con't offord their rents.
Those are the people that are going to be evicted
under this low, " says Angelita Anderson.
law for supervising judges in each bor-
ough, urges jurists to delay final judg-
ments until tenants receive their checks to
ensure the five-day rule is never allowed
to kick in.
UnHrthH a C.m
But to Sommer the only way to really
fix the law is to have it declared uncon-
stitutional. At presstime, the tenant coali-
tion was shopping for suitable tenants to
file a class-action suit. This summer,
though, Legal Aid and Legal Services
lawyers unearthed a gem, a little-known
35-year-old state statute-the so-called
"Spiegel Law"-which legitimizes wel-
fare recipients' rent strikes against
"slumlords" by requiring property own-
ers to clear up all "dangerous or haz-
ardous conditions" before receiving wel-
fare rent payments. For many of the 30
percent of Housing Court litigants
receiving public assistance, it means they
may not have to pay rent deposits imme-
diately, giving them more time to raise
money or find counsel.
"In all my years doing this, I have
never had a single Housing Court client
whose apartment has not had a violation,"
says Judith Goldiner, a Legal Aid attorney
who helped develop the Spiegel strategy.
"This is a major tool to help poor tenants
because there is a direct correlation
between the poverty of the tenants and the
physical deterioration of their building."
Goldiner says the law-named for its
original sponsor, Manhattan state
Assemblyman Samuel Spiegel-has
already been upheld by the state
Supreme Court. It languished because of
a unique "trigger": In order for the law to
take effect, the city Department of
Housing, Preservation and Development
(HPD) must provide the city Human
Resources Administration with the pass-
word to its in-house violations comput-
er-something the agency had never
done. Last month, under threat of law-
suits, HPD commissioner Ri chard
Roberts told Legal Services he had
turned the password over to HRA.
"It's not going to save all the tenants,"
Sommer says, "but we need all the help we
can get."
Under-Hauling Housing Court
In early October, Court of Appeals Chief Judge JudiUt Kaye unveiled a series of refonns to deal wiUt the new rent
laws, beginning wiUt the elimination of Part 18, the court's cattle-call session that assembles landlords and tenants to
await judge assignments. Under her directive, the court replaced Part 18 wiUt special new judicial parts: a co-op and
condo section, a new sectioo to deal wiUt rent deposits and a case resolution section.
"We have taken apart the COII't, dismantled tt and put tt back together," said Jonathan Lippman, chief
administrative judge of the state court system, speaking at a Manhattan Housing Court press conference. As part of
the makeover, Lippman also touted the hiring of five new Housing Court judges. Other elements of the overhaul include:
Adding educational resource centers, a telephone hoHine and plea fonns for litigants.
Coordinating state and city housing databases to give judges access to code violations and other infonnation.
Adding "reSOllCe assistants" to aid judges in investigating facts on cases.
Expanding court clerks' hours and holding sessions at night as a pilot experiment in Queens and Staten Island
Housing Courts.
But tenant advocates are unimpressed. "The bottom line is that this plan doesn't address the fact that the over-
whelming of tenants go against landlords who have lawyers, even though they don't have representation
themselves," says Steve Banks of Legal Aid's Homeless Rights Untt. "There can't be refonn until you address
that issue. ''-{IT

Expansion of New
Yorks manufactur-
ing base is stymied
by a lack offund-
ing. while city poli-
cies for former
industrial land
favor residential
projects such as the
Queens West apart-
ment complex. as
seen from the
Greenpoint
Manufacturing and
Design Center.
Finding Factory Funding
F
~ i : d O ~ S e of the Greenpoint
Manufacturing and Design
Center in Brooklyn you can see
the threat that could kill the
center's chance to expand and create even
more jobs than it already has.
lust across Newtown Creek and up the
East River, the red brick of the recently
completed 42-story Queens West apartment
complex glows in the late afternoon sun.
The structure is a harbinger of residential
development now spreading into manufac-
turing districts across the outer boroughs. In
Greenpoint, the GMDC complex-stuffed
with cabinet makers, framers, metal work-
ers and design shops-is surrounded by
vacant factories and warehouses sporting
"For Sale" signs, and the area is zoned for
manufacturing.
But the center's director, David
Sweeney, says landowners don't want to
sell to him. They think they will get abet-
ter deal if and when the neighborhood is
rezoned for mixed uses, including resi-
dential-a plan that city officials are cur-
rently reviewing. According to Sweeney,
some owners are already cashing in by
The city s multibillion dollar municipal pension funds
could shift their investments to fuel a
illegally converting lofts
into apartments.
Despite the popular belief that manu-
facturing is dead in New York City,
250,000 New Yorkers still work in facto-
ries, and the current economic expansion
is giving industry a chance to grow. Yet
manufacturers around the city are run-
ning out of space and need new capital
investment resources, according to Adam
Friedman of the nonprofit New York
Industrial Retention Network, which
works to save the city's blue-collar jobs.
For a city with a 9.5 percent unemploy-
ment rate and hundreds of thousands of
workers in desperate need of a decent
wage, investing in manufacturing seems
like a natural. Instead, the Giuliani
administration is focusing its economic
development energy on paying major
corporations tens of millions of dollars-
sometimes more than once-to keep
their headquarters in the city.
A manufacturing revival would require
government intervention-including
strengthening and enforcing protective
manufacturing revival.
By Chris Seymour
zoning regulations and boost-
ing technical assistance pro-
grams. But another linchpin,
says Friedman, is finding new
capital. He points to the multibil-
lion dollar government and union
pension funds that currently fuel a
significant percentage of Wall
Street's current boom.
A growing number of progres-
sive political and labor leaders are
calling for such a major boost in
"economically targeted investing,"
or ETI, using pension fund invest-
ments to create jobs or low-cost hous-
ing while earning money to pay for
workers'retirement.
"We need to have a real discussion
if you are taking money from New York
City to invest in manufacturing in
Burma while the local manufacturing
base deteriorates," says Joe Gerard, sec-
retary-treasurer of United Steelworkers of
America. "You can use that pension fund
capital to build housing, create jobs, build
stronger communities."
The strategy is not new. For many
years, New York pension managers have
invested in government-backed mortgages
to develop low- and moderate-income
housing. Increasingly, they are talking
about shifting funds into job creation
strategies. But the Giuliani administration
has said little on the subject, even as the
Department of City Planning seeks to re-
zone large swaths of manufacturing land in
the outer boroughs so that landowners can
develop new housing.
Skill" Work Fore ..
At the nucleus of GMDC is a group of
woodworkers forced out of Manhattan by
skyrocketing real estate prices in the early
1980s. They set up shop in an empty for-
mer net and twine factory, taking advan-
tage of affordable space and the neighbor-
hood's skilled work force, largely West
Indian and Eastern European immigrants.
The city, which had taken over the
complex for back taxes, would rent to
them only month by month, however, and
CITY LIMITS

refused to invest anything in the crumbling
structures. Working with local politicians
and neighborhood groups in the late
1980s, the woodworkers launched the non-
profit GMDC and persuaded the city to
turn the buildings over for a dollar in 1994.
"We started in 1990 with 12 businesses
with 80 employees," recalls Sweeney.
"Now there are 68 businesses employing
400 people, and our space is full."
Public Advocate Mark Green has offered
a two-pronged proposal that could use eco-
nomically targeted investing to help GMDC
and other New York City manufacturers.
There are some 4,000 acres of "brown-
fields" in the city-completely unused man-
ufacturing land, representing about one-fifth
of the city's roughly 20,000 total acres of
manufacturing-zoned land. Developers and
lenders usually won't touch projects on the
brownfields because most of the acreage is
contaminated with decades-old industrial
waste. First, Green says, the city should
draw on some of the $200 million in money
available for brownfields cleanup under the
state's 1996 Environmental Bond Act to
reclaim that land. Then, he suggests, if a
fmn wants to build a factory the city's
Economic Development Corporation can
lend it money-backed by federal commu-
nity development loan guarantees-and sell
the loan to one of the city's public employee
pension funds.
Green points out that New York City
could tap into federal loan guarantees of
up to $1.2 billion, but has drawn on only
$40 million.
"It's well worth exploring," says Jon
Lukomnik, the deputy comptroller who
oversees the five city employee pension
funds for city Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
However, he notes, the mayor would have
to make the first move-by instructing the
city's Economic Development Corp-
oration (EDC) to originate the investment
and apply the loan guarantee-before the
funds could invest any money.
The idea is clearly not a high priority
for Mayor Giuliani, however. He has not
responded to Green's proposal, and an aide
in the mayor's press office says top offi-
cials at the deputy mayor's office for eco-
nomic development and EDC know noth-
ing about the proposal. "It slipped through
the cracks or something," says Curt Ritter,
a spokesperson in the mayor's office.
/It.. Small Fraction
The city's pension system has been
making economically targeted invest-
ments, chiefly for mortgages on affordable
housing, since 1981, when the five funds
pumped $226 million into a program that
NOVEMBER 1997
lent to 4,200 families in redlined neighbor-
hoods. But overall, ETIs comprise just a
small fraction of the funds ' investments.
The city's biggest such fund, the $32.4 bil-
lion New York City Employees
Retirement Service (NYCERS), which
provides pensions for most Transit
Authority employees as well as non-uni-
formed, non-teaching city workers, has
roughly $22 billion invested in stocks and
$9 billion in bonds and other debt instru-
ments-but only $532 million in econom-
ically targeted investments.
The fund's ETI investments have pro-
duced strong returns averaging more than
10 percent annually during the last five
years, which is well above the rate of
return on the government bonds NYCERS
uses as a yardstick. The stock market has
far exceeded that in recent years, however,
and the law requires pension funds to max-
imize returns for their retirees. To most
money managers, that means heavy invest-
ments in stocks.
Yet labor leaders are pushing pension
funds with union representation on their
boards to make ETIs that create union
jobs. For example, the Union Labor Life
Insurance Company, which manages
investments for a number of union pen-
sion funds around the country, last year
committed $5 million for an 18 percent
stake in Retirement Systems Inc. , to
fmance the construction of 75 retirement
homes over the next six years. The project
will employ 2,250 union construction
workers, and the Service Employees
International Union will organize the
2,400 service workers in the finished
homes without management opposition.
This agenda draws fire from conserva-
tives like Marvin Kosters of the American
Labor Capital Strategies
"We don't need to place 011 money with people that have anti-union policies," says the AFL-CIO's Rich
Ferlauto. labor wields some control over $1.3 trillion in pension fund assets, and they are increasingly
being used as a tool to ilqlrove workers' economic situation.
For example, Michael Musuraca of DC 37 says he and other labor pension fund officials are pressuring 80ston-
based State Street Bank and Trust to stop its campaign to privatize Social Security, a proposal that would generate
huge fees for State Street and other Wall Street fiMIIS managing hundreds of billions of dollars of formerly public
money. If State Street contiooes tts campaign, Musuraca says, the company will jeopardize its contract with the New
York City Employee Retiree System to manage $543 million in govemment bond investments.
looaI unioo officials discussed these and other capital strategies at a conference sponsored by the New York City
Central Labor CooociI of the AFL -GIO on October 15. Before deciding how to wield their finanica! muscle, however, they
had to loam how to cope wtth the many ctrbs on unions' pension fund leverage. frst, federal law restricts labor rep-
resentation to half the seats on the boards of private-sector union plans, and workers sometimes have no representa-
tion on public employee plans. So unions have to persuade at least some management representatives to back their
initiatives. Second, the law requi'es pension plans to seek the highest return possible for retirees, putting goals like
job creation and IoW-C08t housilg second.
This requirement limits pension funds' sooial impact. "The problems of Iow-iooome CO/IIIJIIIIIities cannot be solved
with market-rate capital alone," contends Greg Ramm, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Institute for
Community Ecomics, which runs a $12 mUlion community development loan fund. Ramm says the coooerned
institutioos and individuals that lend to ICE and 48 other members of the National Assooiation of Community
Development Loan Funds at beIow-market rates are trading some financial returns for a sooial return. Under ctmnt
law, COO1Plains Ramm, there's a taboo on even asking whether this is a reasonable tradeo1f.
"You can do a lot of targeted investing that gets an adequate rate of return," argues Steelworkers union
Secretary-Treasurer Leo Gerard. But, he agrees, "I don't think we should always be driven by getting the maximum
return."
In fact, labor is investigating ways to emulate Iabor-sponsored investment funds in Canada. These funds, CUIT8IItIy
managing over $2.5 bilion, o1fer union meiOOers and other synJ,Jathetic individuals a below-market return for
their investments in job creation schemes. But the investors also get tax credits from their proviooial govemments,
increasing the e1fective return on the investment.
"I think you can be hung for tabg lie that in Washington today," says Gerard. ''But in Quebec, the expendibre
on tax credits is paid back in four to five years" tIrough iooreased tax rev81118S generated by the jobs created.
"There's not many govemment programs that can match that." -1lS
NeVI York
La"'Yers
for the
Public
Interest
provides free legal referrals for
community-based and non-profit groups
seeking pro bono representation.
Projects include corporate, tax
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and employment discrimination,
environmental justice,
disability and civil rights.
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call NYLPI at
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Enterprise Institute, who brands them "politically
targeted investments." After taking control of
Congress in 1995, Republican leaders moved to
force the Labor Department to revoke its 1994
regulation that established ground rules for ETIs.
The effort failed, but the Republicans did kill
funding for a proposed clearinghouse to track the
performance of ETIs. According to Rich
Ferlauto, special projects coordinator of the AFL-
CIO's new Office of Investment, the GOP attack
has prompted the Labor Department to back off
from promoting ETIs.
CrNn'. Point
The flow of ETI investments by the New York
City funds has slowed in recent years, partly
because the federal and state governments have
cut back on the mortgage guarantee programs
that support the bulk of the city funds' ETI port-
folio. NYCERS officials have also decided to tar-
get more investments toward creating jobs
through investing in small- and medium-sized
businesses, which is more risky and complicated
than investing in housing.
To help navigate that process, NYCERS decid-
ed in 1994 to hire a consultant to identify and
screen opportunities to invest in New York City
businesses. Pacific Corporate Advisors was given
the nod in 1996 and presented two potential
investments to the NYCERS board, which reject-
ed both of them. Green, who sits on the board,
calls that record "disappointing," noting, "it took
two years to hire a consultant, and so far, that con-
sultant has failed to produce a single investment
that works for NYCERS."
"We're disappointed also," responds
Lukomnik, "but sometimes things that seem like
they should take a shorter time take longer. We do
that to protect the pensioners."
Michael Musuraca, who represents the city's
largest municipal union, District Council 37, on
the NYCERS Investment Committee, agrees:
"These are long-term projects. Speed is not neces-
sarily the thing I'm looking for."
But businesses like GMDC might need help
sooner rather than later. Faced with woodworkers
demanding room to expand, Sweeney feels
Green's proposal could help fill two needs: land
and financing. "Bankers have bought the notion
that industry doesn't belong in the city," he com-
plains, so it's almost impossible for manufactur-
ing businesses to get loans.
Lukomnik agrees that preserving blue-collar
jobs is important. However, he says, "this is a
pension fund, not a manufacturing fund, not a
housing fund. We can't single-handedly solve the
problem of entry-level manufacturing jobs."
Green remains adamant. "This is something
that creates jobs, doesn't affect the budget and
does nothing to put pension money at risk," he
says. "Why isn't the city doing it?"
Journalist and folk singer Chris Seymour lives in
Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
Specializing in
Community Development Groups,
HDFCs and
Low .. Cost Insurance and Quality Service.
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Insurance Broker
Over 20 Years of Experience.
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It all boils down to desire and commitment. The Morrisons' desire to
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NOVEMBER 1997
B
PIPELINE
The RPA:S AL
AppLeton says
community groups
have made them-
seLves a f orce to
be reckoned with.
~
,
Lone Ranger No More
The Regional Plan Association, once the darling of the region s power elite, is rallying neigh-
borhood leaders and urban activists behind its blueprint for the future. By Michael Hirsch
R
eleased only 21 months ago,
"A Region at Risk," the
Regional Plan Association's
ambitious blueprint for the
tri-state area's future, might
appear dead in the water. News coverage
has been scant, and insiders will tell you
the paths to the RPA's success in the past
are no longer open. But the veteran white-
shoe group, more accustomed to whisper-
ing in the ears of the powerful than work-
ing the streets for support, isn't done yet.
They are looking for new allies among the
more than 50,000 nonprofit and communi-
ty groups throughout the region.
"We're doing more work among grass-
roots groups because we've changed, the
region has changed and the city polity has
changed," says RPA Executive Director
Robert Yaro. "Now we need to create
coalitions of civic groups that can promote
actions around the recommendations of
the plan. The RPA is not in the Lone
Ranger business anymore."
Founded in 1923 as the Committee on
the Regional Plan, the RPA issued two
previous Olympian plans-in 1929 and
1968-which heavily emphasized land
use and transportation reforms.
Supporters say these plans helped main-
tain the region as a center of national eco-
nomic activity; critics argue they laid the
groundwork for a commercial and resi-
dential development bonanza that helped
drive many New York manufacturers out
of business or out of town.
In the past, the RPA's influence came
largely from civic-minded titans like the
brothers Rockefeller, various Morgan
bankers and the munificent Russell Sage
Foundation. "It wasn't a strict mecha-
nism," says Fred Siegel, the Cooper Union
historian and left-wing apostate turned
Giuliani advisor. "There was a kind of
association, a familiarity. These people
had an honored place at the table."
That's not to say there is no corporate
support these days: The RPA has a $1.7
million annual budget, and the 60-member
board boasts directors from GE Capital,
Chase Manhattan Bank, Goldman Sachs,
and Deloitte and Touche. Dozens of corpo-
rations donated money for "A Region at
Risk"-30 of them gave more than
$100,000. But the times have assuredly
changed. With the decline in the number of
Fortune 500 giants headquartered here and
the Wall Street-induced mania for down-
sizing, global expansion and rapid-fire
turnover at the top comes a waning of cor-
porate noblesse oblige, and the RPA has to
hunt for new friends.
Times have changed politically, as
well. Siegel argues that city planning sim-
ply doesn't hold sway among the power-
ful the way it once did. "You certainly
don't have any major politicians involved
with transportation issues," he laments.
But AI Appleton, a senior fellow at RPA
who served as commissioner of environ-
mental protection under Mayor David
Dinkins, notes that the change in lunch
partners can also be attributed to the rise
of the grassroots.
"Twenty-five years ago, you didn't
have the community group structure as
now. If you're going to get things built,
you have to realize there's a lot of stake-
holders," he says. "The local groups are
there because the public felt a need for
them-they didn't like what they got with
the old system."
Mew Era
"A Region at Risk," co-authored by
Yaro and essayist Tony Hiss, aims to deal
with the needs of this 20-million person,
3 I-county region well into the next centu-
ry. Its recommendations are centered
around five campaigns-to protect the
greensward and watersheds surrounding
the city, create a rational passenger and
freight transportation system, assist still-
struggling urban centers such as Jamaica
and Newark, provide a superior education
for the area's workforce, and fashion new
structures for regional governance. Taken
together, they are meant to create a more
sustainable future for the region, economi-
cally, environmentally and socially.
The Regional Plan Association's new
era was on display last summer, when Jo
Anne Simon, chair of the Gowanus
Expressway Community Coalition, shared
the lectern with Appleton at a City Hall
press conference to unveil plans for a pro- ~
posed four-mile, $2.4 billion tunnel to ~
replace Brooklyn's decomposing Gowanus ~
Expressway. The 23 groups in the commu- ~
CITY LI MITS
oity coalition give the RPA's proposal a
constituency few of its projects have ever
had. They are all from neighborhoods abut-
ting or close to the crippled expressway,
and they're fighting hard to block the state
Department of Transportation's plan to
reconstruct the elevated highway.
'The RPA learned that if they didn't
access local ideas they would go astray.
They learned things they wouldn't have
known, like where traffic bottlenecks
would likely be," says Simon, a disability
attorney and president of the Boerum Hill
Association. She says the RPA has incor-
porated the coalition's suggestions into
their design.
"Our proposals are made much
stronger by going back and forth to the
community with the plan," Appleton says.
"We're trying to be an asset to the com-
munity groups leading the charge."
The Gowanus project is not an aberra-
tion. Since the third plan was released, the
RPA has led the Governor's Island
Group--a civic coalition to evaluate public
uses for the property after its federal dispo-
sition-and joined other groups working to
redevelop abandoned industrial sites in the
area. The RPA has also signed on to the
250-member Greensward Council's forest
and water initiatives, and helped establish a
multipartnered lobbying effort to reautho-
rize the federal transportation legislation
known as ISTEA. Efforts on education and
the workforce are in the works.
"[The RPA's plan] can bring communi-
ty leaders, civic actors, environmentalists,
environmental justice advocates and civil
rights organizations into a dialogue," says
longtime housing and community activist
Ron Shiffman, director of the Pratt
Institute Center for Community and
Environmental Development. Those who
follow nonprofit politics around the city
might be surprised to see Shiffman sup-
porting the RPA, but it shows how differ-
ent things are these days.
The Plutocrats of the RPA
The unlikely pairing isn't lost on Yaro,
who recalls a demonstration outside an
RPA event in 1976: 'There was Ron
Shiffman in what for all I know was a tie-
dyed T-shirt picketing and demonstrating
against the plutocrats of RPA. Now here's
Ron working with us. And part of that's
Ron, part of that's the world, and part of
that's us, because RPA is a different place.
And it's made us a better organization and
a much more effective organization."
Shiffman remembers it differently. He
says the RPA was honoring planning fix-
ture Roger Starr shortly after the soon-to-
NOVEMBER 1997
s
A Plan and its Critics
"I Region at Risk" aims to turn around decades of neglect. "This is a region that has not added a single
It piece of infrastructure of any kind: highway, bridge, tunnel, anything, you name n, since 1961, when the
Verrazano and the lower level of the George Washington bridge went up," says RPA Executive Director Robert
Yaro. "We haven't buitt a damn thing in 40 years, and we haven't planned anything in a century. At the
same time, every other world center has been transforming ns infrastructure and creating new capacity for
sustainable economic development."
That new economic capacity isn't just infrastructure-the plan's education and governance sections are wm-
ten wnh a better business climate in mind, too. "[Corporate] locational decisions aren't being made for
attruism or romance or a feeling of civic connection. They're made for very utilnarian reasons," Yaro insists.
"Corporations want a skilled workforce and an urban infrastructure that makes living and working in New York
viable well into the next century. A lot of this plan is about the city being able to add jobs. A highly mobile and
skilled work force wants ns quality-of-life needs met."
But the plan is not all about the money. The authors slam housing segregation and wrne that "economic
growth that can't budge racial and economic divisions is neither desirable nor sustainable." Topics from equi-
table school financing to local parks are part of the plan, as well.
Some critics aren't buying n. CUNY's John E. Seley argues that the RPA offers lnile to address the city's
severe poverty and unemployment problems. He wonders if the new plan, like ns predecessors, isn't just a
wishlist. At an academic conference after the plan was unveiled last year, he scorned what he says is
sketchy treatment of school financing and mere "lip service to the specific economic and polnical requisnes for
real change in our neighborhoods and for those least able to fight for themselves." He says the authors give
lnile attention "to the specific means, time and cost of implementing realistic alternatives."
Others pick and choose which parts of the plan they like, at times splitting the grassroots on specific items.
For example, Lou Albano, president of District Council 37's Civil Service Technical Guild, thinks the RPA's call
for a Gowanus Expressway tunnel would come at the expense of the ambnious harbor freight tunnel project
sponsored by Rep. Jerrold Nadler and endorsed by the RPA. The latter project, Albano says, would bring jobs
to the city by connecting truck and rail traffic wnh the Jersey shore. "There's so much ISlEA money to go
around," he says, referring to the much-sought-after federal transportation-funding program.
Yaro, while measured about the region's needs and timetable to meet them, is dismissive of his crnics. He
trashes Seley's crnicisms, as "a series of unsubstantiated rubbish, cheap shot, Rockefellers-under-the-bed,
mid-20th century rhetoric," and "gratuitous mush." Yet Yaro and the RPA also know they have lnile hope for
succoss wnhout attracting those community organizations that their most persistent critics speak to,
and ofton for. -MH
be ex-city housing commissioner floated
his notorious 'planned shrinkage' policy,
which espoused pulling city services out
of poor neighborhoods to encourage resi-
dents to leave. "We were planners and had
reasons that were substantive to be there.
In the same circumstances I would do it
again," Shiffman says. He remembers
wearing a jacket, tie and likely a blue
chambray shirt, appropriate gear for a
properly outraged city planner.
Shiffman describes his current work
with RPA as "an effort to promote citizen,
community and business participation in
reviewing, enhancing and developing" the
plan's suggestions. To get the private sec-
tor into local affairs again, he wants to
promote a "civic pledge," where business-
es "provide executives and financial sup-
port to boards of community and civic
groups and establish 'mentoring relation-
ships' with these groups and with emerg-
ing community leaders."
Shiffman insists participants need not
agree with everything the plan advocates,
which is probably a good thing. ''This is
about getting people together to comment
on it," he says, adding that he hopes such
gatherings "build new collaborative rela-
tionships among community, business,
environmental and other activist groups."
In other words, they don't even have to
like each other, but, courtesy of the once
remote and removed RPA, they may be
able to work together .
Michael Hirsch is afrequent contributor
to City Limits.
ME
-
A L V A N N A N _ ~
----.....VOL
GGEJ2).
Bertram L Baker,
the author's grand-
father and
Brooklyn's first
black elected
official, wielded
Tammany-like clout
in Bed-Stuy for 22
years. Vann firsT
won Baker's for-
mer assembly seat
in 1974.
-
"A lot of people don't understand the true environment of the
period when we grew up," Vann told the folks at the event for
Hawkins. The audience was mostly older men who had gone to
the school when it was Boys High, a fabled Bed-Stuy institution.
Many of them attended nearly half a century ago, when Vann
played hoops for rival Franklin K. Lane.
Back then, to be black and from New York meant you lived
in either Harlem or Bed-Stuy. Blacks in those days fought their
own "up South" version of the civil rights war, surviving insults
and discrimination, and struggling against a white establish-
ment that denied them access to power. But Vann, like Connie
Hawkins, soared over those barriers. And if ever there was a
man who represented the soaring potential of black power in
Brooklyn, it was Al Vann.
"We led the whole struggle," he said in his speech. "I feel for
the younger brothers and sisters who did not have the opportunity
to share what we shared."
Vann was sounding a theme of nostalgia and race pride that has
intensified in him over the last 10 years or so, as his political for-
tunes have declined. He seemed to be reaching for a past that once
promised greater things, for him and for his community.
This year, during the politically divisive mayoral race, Vann's
ambitious dream of unifying minority communities in the city has
never seemed further away. As many of black Brooklyn's politi-
cians defected from the Democrats to support Rudolph Giuliani,
only Vann and a few stalwarts kept the progressive faith by ener-
getically backing Ruth Messinger. And even he was aU but invis-
ible in the final weeks of the campaign.
This year's race is only the latest chapter in a deeper story
about one of the most significant and vibrant black communities
in the country. During the 23 years Vann has represented Bed-Stuy
in the state Assembly, the neighborhood has lost its once undis-
puted position as the heart of political power in Brooklyn. It is a
process that began in the 1970s, as Bed-Stuy's population began
to dwindle and as black immigrants from the West Indies poured
into the nearby neighborhoods of Crown Heights and Flatbush.
The demographic shifts generated fundamental changes in the
culture and politics of Central Brooklyn.
No politician has been more affected by them than Vann, a
leader in the radical fight for school decentralization in the 1960s,
fierce advocate of community empowerment in the ' 70s and, in
the ' 80s, a visionary who hoped to create a coalition that would
transform Democratic Party politics and unify low-income black
and Latino communities citywide. In the '90s, Vann's progressive
agenda is out of step with the smaller-government movement and
alienated from the Republican power brokers. So Vann has left
behind the revolutionary rhetoric. He speaks more about business
enterprises as Bed-Stuy's salvation, and focuses his attention on
finessing contracts and grants for organizations and businesses in
his home turf.
A! Vann has seen the revolution and come back out the other
side, his power reduced, his aspirations curtailed.
I see a certain irony in this.
ack in 1992, A! Vann invited me to a homecom-
ing award ceremony at which he was posthu-
mously honoring my grandfather, Bertram L.
Baker, who in 1948 became the first black per-
son ever elected to office in Brooklyn. For 22
years, Baker wielded Tammany-like clout as a
district leader and assemblyman in the seat
Vann now occupies.
After my mother and father divorced, she and I went to live in
the brownstone home of my grandparents. In many ways my =
grandfather was like a father to me, but I confess that I came to ~
hate politics and remained forever suspicious of politicians. 1 was ~
in continual conflict with my grandfather. He felt 1 harbored radi- ~
cal, if not revolutionary, ideas. I felt my ideas were not so much j
CITY LIMITS
J
radical or revolutionary as resentful.
I knew guys my age who had died violent deaths on the streets.
And cops seemed to have only disdain for the residents. After
reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," I came to believe
that my community was held captive by the conservative political
forces that my grandfather represented. For almost 10 years, until
I was in my mid-20s or so, my grandfather and I barely spoke.
Mercifully, in the mid-1970s, after he retired and' longed to talk
with him about his past, we drew much closer and I carne to
respect all he had done for me and for Bed-Stuy.
It was against this backdrop that, despite my continued reser-
vations about politicians, I decided to accept the award Al Vann
was offering to my grandfather. After all, , asked myself, who
among the black elected officials in New York deserved the bene-
fit of a doubt more than Al Vann?
My mind reeled back a generation. When I was away at col-
lege in the late '60s, I remember hearing about a Bed-Stuy
native, then in his early 30s, who was making waves in the com-
munity. There was Vann in his dashiki, black, sharp-featured
and (in the minds of many whites) menacingly tall and athletic.
He spoke to and for a people developing a new African, militant
consciousness. His base, initially, was the public school system,
where he taught in junior high schools in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Those who looked up to him called him Mwalimu, Swahili for
"Great Teacher."
At this time, my grandfather was still in power but beset on
one side by white reformers and on the other by black activists
allied with Vann. He was dejectedly marking time toward his
retirement in 1970, while the younger man was gathering increas-
ing attention thanks to his role in the divisive fight for control of
schools in the neighboring community of Ocean HiLI-Brownsville.
ann was leader of the African-American
Teachers Association, which got into heat-
ed, sometimes physical battles with mem-
bers of the powerful and largely Jewish
United Federation of Teachers, led by
Albert Shanker. Some of Vann's most
aggressive backing came from a now-
defunct political and cultural center called the East, whose asso-
ciates ranged from diehard revolutionaries to Swahili-speaking
cultural nationalists. One of the leaders there was Jitu Weusi,
formerly known as Les Campbell. In 1968 Weusi angered Jews
when he went on a radio program and had a black student read
a poem complaining about a "Jew boy with your yarmulke on."
Vann was thus a point man in one of the city's most bitter con-
flicts between blacks and Jews.
As the controversy surrounding him increased, Vann made a
painful but strategic decision that alienated some of his most rad-
ical supporters. His hard core backers at the East thought it was a
sellout, but in 1972 Vann decided to seek power inside the politi-
cal system and run for the assembly seat vacated two years previ-
ously by my grandfather. The position was held at the time by Cal
Williams, the owner of Black Pearl Car Service.
Vann lost his first race, but in 1974, on his second try, he won.
Vann and his friends, flush with their unexpected victory, imme-
diately set themselves about the task of doing away with the old
"get-along, go-along" brand of politics and replacing it with one
that, by their own description, put the interests of the community
NOVEMBER 1997
before those of a select few job-seekers. Liberals at The Village
Voice held Al Vann up as an example of courage and virtue in the
fight against the Democratic machine.
Vann surprised some of the old guard by arriving in Albany
wearing a suit and tie. "They were probably expecting me to show
up in a dashiki , because dashikis were the order of the day for me
at the time," Vann says. '" think they were taken aback when I
showed up looking just like them."
But the machine wasn't so ready to accept the sworn outsider.
Back home in Brooklyn, the battles with the Democratic regulars
continued. In 1980, blindsided and outmaneuvered by the party
machine, he was kicked off the ballot in the primary and had to
run on the Liberal Party line against the black machine candidate.
He prevailed nonetheless. Speaking of the victory, activist Weusi
recalls: "It was the first time a local person running on the Liberal
VANN, FLUSH WITH
UNEXPECTED VICTORY,
SET ABOUT DOING
AWAY WITH THE OLD
"GET-ALONG, GO-
ALONG" BRAND OF
POLITICS.
line alone defeated a Democrat.... That was the level of street sup-
port that he had. He went back up to Albany and everyone was
saying to him, 'Let me see you walk on water.'"
Vann continued to challenge the machine in ways that attract-
ed ambitious black professionals to his club, the Vannguard
Independent Democratic Association. In the early 1980s, pushed
by Vann, three young associates-attorneys Esmerelda Simmons
and Paul Wooten, and strategist John Flateau-ftled a series of
lawsuits arguing that district lines should be redrawn to allow for
more minority representation. One of the suits went to the U.S.
Supreme Court and was decided in their favor. All together, the
actions resulted in the creation of a dozen new minority legislative
seats in New York state.
Side by side with this legal strategy, Vann encouraged and
tutored young politicians like Roger Green, who eventually beat
the machine-backed white incumbent Harvey L. Strelzin of the
Fort Greene assembly district. What's more, the black population
continued to surge in areas beyond Bed-Stuy, leading to the elec-
tion of even more blacks.
Vann's ascendancy peaked in 1984 when, as a founder along
with Congressman Major Owens of the Coalition for
Community Empowerment, he decided to try and harness the
-1
Before entering
electoral politics,
Vann was a school-
teacher and a
leader in the
Ocean Hill-
Brownsville fight
for community
control of public
schools. His allies
included some of
Bed-Stuy 's most
diehard revolution-
aries and cultural
nationalists.
-
quickly growing power of the minority vote. He became state
campaign director for the Reverend Jesse Jackson's presidential
bid, an effort that resulted in the registration of tens of thousands
of new black voters, especially in Brooklyn. It seemed that a
new era was dawning on local politics.
In truth, Vann's brightest political days were already behind
him.
...... he 1985 election was supposed to have been
black Brooklyn's moment of triumph. It was
a bold grasp at power by progressive black
politicians led by Vann and backed by a
multi-ethnic coalition. They were trying to
forge an alliance with Puerto Rican mayoral
aspirant Herman Badillo, who wanted to
unseat the increasingly conservative incumbent, Edward 1. Koch.
Vann hoped to ride Badillo's coattails and wrest the Brooklyn
borough presidency away from the party regulars-and with it, he
hoped, the entire county Democratic organization.
In the process, he hoped to build a long-term alliance between
Hispanics and blacks, who had been divided politically. The vehi-
cle for this was an organization called Coalition for a Just New
York, pulling together all black politicians and activists citywide.
The hostility between Koch and black leaders at that time was
deep and palpable. Some called the mayor a racist for his plans to
close hospitals in minority communities, and Koch's attitude
toward them was highligbted when he donned an Afro wig at a
gala with reporters and ignited a firestorm of protest from black
politicians and columnists.
But in a move that shocked Vann, the so-called "Gang of
Four" from Harlem-Charles Rangel, David Dinkins, Basil
Paterson and Percy Sutton-broke ranks and put forth their own
candidate for mayor, Harlem Assemblyman Herman "Denny"
Farrell, a dark horse if ever there was one. They argued that a
black group like the Coalition for a Just New York should support
a black candidate, not a Puerto Rican. Badillo bitterly withdrew
from consideration. Farrell lost badly in the primary. Down went
Al Vann's grand designs, never to be revived.
"The coup that the Gang of Four was able to pull off basical-
ly diminished AI 's power as leader of black Brooklyn, and it
diminished Brooklyn's emergence as the locus of political power
for black folks in New York City," recalls Esmerelda Simmons,
now executive director of the Center for Law and Social Justice,
based at Medgar Evers College, which is part of the City
University of New York.
The dominance of the entrenched old-line Harlem leadership
continued, culminating in Dinkins' election as mayor in 1989. In
Brooklyn, on the other hand, black leaders became increasingly
parochial in their concerns, even as tbe number of black elected
officials soared. Today, the borough has 18 black elected officials,
far more than any other borougb.
But Vann, more than a decade later, turns misty with
thougbts of what might have been. If his coalition had taken
root, he says, black politicians would have been better able to
minimize the deep social service cuts made in recent years by
the Clinton, Pataki and Giuliani administrations; black leaders
would have been more effective in confronting police brutali-
ty; and the county Democratic Party machine would be ready
to exact political punishment on Congressman Ed Towns and
Councilwoman Priscilla Wooten, who recently bolted ranks
and announced endorsements of Republican Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani.
Several Vann associates say the assemblyman's face today
shows the pain of what they call the 1985 "betrayal." In the two
years after that debacle, Vann pondered getting out of politics. He
toyed with the idea of going into real estate. Eventually, as if com-
ing full circle, he settled into his job of local legislator.
n that evening back in 1992, as I was
called to receive the award for my grand-
father, I couldn't help but wonder. What
did AI Vann really think about Bert
Baker, the tailor-suited Tammany leader?
What did he really think of the calculat-
ing man who had retained power in
Bedford-Stuyvesant for 22 consecutive years?
It occurred to me recently that Vann has been Bed-Stuy's
assemblyman for 23 years. And, perhaps more revealingly, I
began to note increasing complaints from activists and others that
Vann, now 62 years old, has lost his fire and become too willing ~
to go along with the Albany leadership, the very things I had once .f
heard (and, indeed, said) about my grandfather. _
CITY LIMITS
"Obviously you don' t stay in Albany that long by bucking the
leadership," says Ron Deutsch, director of the
Statewide Emergency Network for Social and Economic Secunty.
Deutsch is upset that Vann backed a welfare reform package
passed by the legislature earlier this year, dramatically cutting
income supports for the poor.
In response, Vann says he and liberal legislators put as many
softeners into the welfare reform bill as they could. He argues that
holding out for more would have been futile.
The wheel turns.
y grandfather was born on the
Caribbean island of Nevis, but came to
Brooklyn in 1915 and moved into
Bedford-Stuyvesant in the 1920s,
when it was coalescing as a black
neighborhood. He was part of a minor-
ity of West Indians who lived in Bed-
Stuy and identified intimately with the struggles of their
brethren who had roots in the South. My grandfather occasIOnal-
ly attended New York meetings organized by Marcus Garvey, the
Jamaican firebrand who preached that black people had "One
God, One Aim, One Destiny."
My grandfather also believed there should always be one b?ss;
and in black Brooklyn, for more than two decades, he was It I
think that Bert Baker would have been astounded at the confusion
and diffusion that mark black politics in Brooklyn today.
The chaos in large part has to do with the hundreds of thou-
sands of migrants from the Caribbean who came to New York
(largely to Brooklyn) in the years after the 1965 change in U.S.
immigration policy. The transformation has been particularly
notable during the last 10 years. Whereas black Brooklyn was
once a definable spot called Bed-Stuy, with soul food joints,
jazz spots, and a world view based on the peculiarities of
American racism, it has become a huge area covering not just
Bedford-Stuyvesant, but also neighboring Crown Heights and
Flatbush. The cultural characteristics of the new black
Brooklyn became jerk chicken, dollar vans blaring reggae, the
West Indian Day parade. Brooklyn has become known the
world over as a center of the African diaspora, but the latest
mutation has had other implications for a homegrown black
elected official like AI Vann.
''The view that many African-Americans have of Caribbeans is
that they fail to realize what the African-American went through in
this country," Vann says. ''They don' t appreciate the value of the
struggle we waged in this country to make it possible for to
come and do these things." For too long, black leaders have failed
to speak out publicly on this issue of intra-black relations, he adds.
"I see the potential for real differences. I think we need to pay
more attention to this. We are not talking to each other," he says.
Barbados-born scholar Calvin Holder, who has written about
the history of black politics in Brooklyn, says the problem is that
no single person or group has emerged to unite the borougb's
African-American and Caribbean communities around a progres-
sive political agenda. .. .
''The issues would be police brutalIty and Jobs, addressmg
immigration issues for foreign-born blacks and school
system far more effective for the black commumty than It present-
ly is," says Holder, a professor of American history at College
NOVEMBER 1997
NO KINGS
IN THIS COUNTY
When it comes to black leadership-or any political leadership for
that matter-the borough that once lorded over the state can't even
rule its own house.
"Brooklyn's not like a window pane that is into two .or
three pieces; it's totally shattered," says L:oUIS, who ,lost a bId
unseat City Council incumbent Mary Pinkett m October s Democranc
primary. (Louis is also a City Limits b<;>ard "Brooklr,n, man,
it's like 16th century Italy. Everybody s got theIr dagger out.
The main problem is that the borough's first AfTIcan-American
Democratic County Leader, Clarence Norman, has been unable to
enforce discipline or prevent major defections of black and Latino
politicians to the Republican camp. Norman, an assemblyman whose
district includes Crown Heights and parts of East Flatbush, has been
a willful non-player in the mayoral race: His support of Messinger
was, at best, halfhearted, which did little to endear him to Ruth stal-
warts AI Varm and other central Brooklyn progressives like
Congressman Major Owens, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery
and Assemblyman Roger Green.
The GOP defections have weakened Norman's already tenuous
grasp on power. This year, he practically conceded the entire
half of his borough to the Giuliani camp. East New York-Brownsville
Congressman Ed Towns and powerful Bushwick
Lopez delivered a passel of officials to the mayor, mcludmg Towns
assemblyman son Darryl, Councilwoman Priscilla Wooten, State
Senator Ada Smith, Councilman Martin Malave-Dilan and District
Leader DeCosta Headley. "The endorsements undermine the strength
of the county organization," Norman concedes. "But to me it's just a
little bump in the road." He then adds: "I have a new motto: 100
percent loyalty, even if it means go percent effectiveness." . .
Nonetheless, Norman says he won't force Lopez to pay for hIS dIS-
loyalty. Towns-who waged a strong, if ultimately bid to
take over the borough's judicial convention earlier thIS year-IS anoth-
er matter. "Congressman Ed Towns has declared war on the county
organization and we're not just going to sit and take it," Norman
says, adding that he does not rule out backing the Reverend AI
Sharpton for the post. .
Add to these troubles ongoing tensions between Amencan and
Caribbean-American blacks in central Brooklyn.
"Clarence Norman is seen as being a little anti-Caribbean," says a
leading West Indian politician. "There will be these perceptions as
long as our AfTIcan-American mends don't treat us as equals and
don't recognize our number and our maturity. It is very much an
identity politics issue here."
"Those who say that have an agenda," Norman replies. "That's just
not true."
of Staten Island.
No one, not AI Sharpton, AI Vann or Caribbean-born City
Council Member Una Clarke, has been able to do this. Clarke is
of Jamaican descent and has been in the forefront of issues low on
Vann's agenda, such as the rights of immigrants and the legaliza-
tion of the dollar vans.
Meanwhile, Vann decided that if he cannot lead black
Brooklyn, then he will focus on his district. This resolve came after
a period of soul-searching following his devastating political set-
back in 1985. "I find comfort working within my base," he says.
-Glenn 'Thrush
--
ore than anything else, Vann has been
busy trying to bring government fund-
ing to Bed-Stuy. This has been a diffi-
cult task, especially with a Republican
governor and a Republican mayor.
Still, millions of dollars have flowed
into social service organizations in
Bedford-Stuyvesant in recent years, largely through Vann's inter-
cession. He has gained seniority in a state Assembly that is still
controlled by Democrats, and he currently chairs the powerful
Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and
Commissions, which reviews hundreds of millions of dollars in
state contracts. Vann is also a three-time past chairman of the
Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus.
One of the main beneficiaries of the veteran assemblyman's
power has been the nonprofit organization that bears his name.
VANN LIKES TO SAY
HE'S HELPING TO BUILD
COMMUNITY INSTITU-
TIONS. OTHERS CALL
IT OLD-FASHIONED
MACHINE POLITICS.
-
The Vannguard Urban Improvement Association, set up two
decades ago, runs educational programs for area youngsters, who
continue to suffer high drop-out rates. Thousands of teens have
gotten summer jobs through the association, and hundreds have
been inspired to attend college through its college prep programs.
Vannguard has also been instrumental in securing grants and loans
for the rehabilitation of housing in the community. The organiza-
tion has a budget of approximately $1.5 million from state and
city grants and contracts, and a staff of 35.
Officially, the assemblyman has no position within Vannguard,
but the ties are long and deep. Its for-profit real estate-holding
subsidiaries collect tens of thousands of dollars in rent from gov-
ernment agencies. And records from the state Board of Elections
show that Vannguard gave $2,000 in October 1996 to the Friends
of AI Vann. Such a political contribution from a publicly funded
organization is illegal. Both Vann and Arthur Niles, the executive
director of the association, say they are looking into the donation.
Besides Vannguard, dozens of other groups, small and large,
have benefited from Vann's influence as a senior state legislator.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and contracts have
gone to the Jackie Robinson Center for Physical Culture, the
Bedford-Stuyvesant Mental Health Center and other social ser-
vice organizations in the community.
Vann likes to say he's helping to build community institutions.
Others call it old-fashioned machine politics, straightforward
wheeling and dealing.
"I see Vannguard as his factory," says Weusi, the activist
with whom Vann has had strained relations in recent years. "I
would rather have a thousand black-owned stores out here. We
have all these elected officials and everybody has their factory.
And the factories all get thousands of dollars. But we collec-
tively as black people don't own small businesses. We don't
own any appreciable amount of real estate. Even the news-
stands, somebody external owns them, not to mention the
bodegas. My politics would have had responsible citizens of
our community owning those businesses and pumping the
money back into the community."
Vann counters that his community needs politicians as well as
activists, and that the two have very different jobs. "Corning out of
my role in the sixties, it was understood that the role of the politi-
cian was to help build institutions," he says. "We need to get a
greater share of the resources in our community. The money needs
to flow into our community .... We have to use the political power
to impact on this economic system. My philosophy has not
changed."
ann, with a paunch protruding slightly from
his thin frame, concedes he has been
increasingly concerned about the financial
well-being of his family, as well as that of
his district. A few years ago, he organized
AI Vann Associates, a for-profit firm, to
solicit Medicaid patients on behalf of a
health maintenance organization, M.H.S. It was at a time when
progressive health activists citywide were excoriating such prac-
tices. Eventually state and federal authorities barred such solicita-
tions. Vann now says he wants to refocus the family firm as a pub-
lic relations and tour company.
Some, including Weusi, say Vann was probably always a
conservative at heart, especially in his lifestyle. Vann is, after all,
a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a longtime
member of the Alpha Phi Alpha black fraternity. He was a busi-
ness administration major at Toledo University in Ohio, and
holds two masters degrees.
Visit the Vann home any evening, and you're likely to find the
assemblyman or his wife, Mildred, a teacher-trainer with the city
Board of Education, babysitting their grandchildren. Vann says one
of his greatest frustrations today is that he wants to be able to do
more for them. He says he'd like to remain in office at least anoth-
er five years but makes no promises beyond that. '1 want to be able
to help my grandchildren get through s c h o o ~ " the assemblyman
says.
In Vann's commitment to his grandchildren, I saw something
of my own grandfather, especially in his later years. My granddad
opened his home to me and my mother. He was my father figure
through childhood and adolescence. During his retirement he
showed his great-grandchildren a tenderness I didn't know he had
in him. He died in 1985 in the Bed-Stuy home where he had lived
for more than half a century.
He and Vann didn't know each other in person, just by reputa-
tion. But if they could sit down and talk today, I think my grand-
father and AI Vann would see eye to eye on many things. One
thing I believe they would 'agree on almost totally is that a people
without a leader is a people without power, and that today, there is
no black leader in Brooklyn .
Ron Howell is George Polk JouT1Ullist in Residence at Long
Island University.
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Required 39 USc. 3685
rille of Publication: Gty limits. Publication No. 498890.
Date of Filing 9/30/97. Frequency of issue:
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of known office of publication: 120 Wall Street, NY NY
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Service, Inc. 120 Wall Street, NY NY 10005. Editor:
Andrew White. Known bondholders, mortgagees or other
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Extent and nature of circulation: Total average no. of
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(83%) I certify that the statements mode by me above are
correct and complete. Andrew White, Editor.
. BankersTrust Company
Community Development Group
NOVEMBER 1997
A resource for the non ... profit
development community

Gary Hattem, Managing Director
Amy Brusiloff, Vice President
130 Liberty Street
10th Floor
New York, New York 10006
Tel: 212-250-7118 Fax: 212-250-8552
--
IDatOIDJ or a Sweetbeart Deal
A media moguJ. and a top Democratic money-man made millions off
battlegrounds. Now the tenants of Beekman Houses are willing to
_ CITY LIMITS
Second in a three-part series:
Cleaning HUD's House
ilma Johnson, a 60-year-old mother
of six and grandmother of 15, has
never met President Clinton, but she
has something in common with
him. They both have done multimil-
lion dollar deals with Gerald
Schuster and his billion-dollar fam-
ily business, Continental Wingate.
Schuster and his wife Elaine have
long been key fundraisers for President Clinton and the
Democratic National Committee. Recent press reports note the
pair were among the first to be invited to the now infamous cof-
fee klatches held in the White House. The Schusters attended
one such gathering on January 12, 1995. Three weeks later they
were sitting next to the President at a fundraising dinner held in
Boston's Park Plaza Hotel. That event alone raised $1.5 million
for the DNC.
WIlma Johnson has never met Gerald Schuster, but she is
familiar with his work. At about the same time the Schusters
were clinking glasses with the Clintons, she was setting into
motion a series of events that would ultimately force Schuster
to agree to sign over the $27 million mortgage on the low-
income housing project where Johnson lives, the Jose de Diego
Beekman Houses.
Beekman's 38 buildings, many of which Continental
Wingate allowed to deteriorate and fall into the hands of the
vicious drug gangs that terrorized this impoverished South
Bronx neighborhood, are not worth much on the open market.
But they are home to 1,238 families, most of whom cannot
afford New York City market rent.
The plan to turn over the mortgage to new owners, largely
shaped by Johnson and other members of the Beekman residents
group, Tenants United for Better Living, aims for a permanent
fix. Several of the housing professionals involved consider it a
model strategy, one the federal Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) could use to save some of the 450
privately owned, federally subsidized housing projects around
the nation that landlords have allowed to fall into disrepair.
Under the deal-originally slated to take effect later this
month----{:ontinental Wingate agreed to hand over control of the
development, gratis, to a management team consisting of two
general partners: a tenant-controlled nonprofit and a for-profit
team of landlords hand-picked by the tenants.
HUD, in turn, agreed to invest an estimated $13 million in
repairs to bring the buildings into compliance with federal hous-
ing quality standards. And the city's own housing finance agency
has agreed to take over the project's mortgage and rehab debts, in
an effort to help preserve the development's affordable rents.
Continental Wingate had a good reason to cooperate. The
deal allows the company to walk away from what will ultimate-
ly be about $40 million in debt. And under its terms, HUD
would never foreclose on Beekman, meaning neither
Continental Wmgate nor the project's many wealthy investors-
of tenemants in one of the city's most notorious drug
Beekman tenant
leader Norma
Allen looks toward
daylight in one of
her development 's
cavernous cul-de-
sacs. For years,
vicious drug deal- ~
ers used these pas- ~
sage ways to ply . ~
their trade. :1
bailout the big boys-just to get control over their own homes.
NOVEMBER 1997
--
The Wild Cowboys.
a Dominican drug
gang. and their
rivals were respon-
sible for scores of
assaults and mur-
ders along East
141st Street and
nearby blocks.
-
including Preston Robert Tisch, the New York billionaire and co-
owner of the entertainment giant Loews Corp.-would be forced
to face costly tax liabilities or litigation.
In the eyes of some observers, this looks like a real sweetheart
deal for the Schusters. Over the last 25 years, state investigators
from Massachusetts and New York have joined tenants and other
critics in blasting Continental Wingate's poor management of gov-
ernment -backed housing. And, indeed, because of mismanagement
of the Beekman project, taxpayers will take a $40 million hit.
But the Beekman tenant leadership would just as soon let the
failures of the past be papered over if it means securing control of
their homes. ''This doesn't have much, if any, precedent. It's a cre-
ative solution," explains Peter Richardson, president of Housing
Strategies Inc., HUD's consultant in the negotiations. "And this is
quite an expensive way to try to deal with this. But," he adds
pointedly, ''1 would argue that it's not as expensive as the alterna-
tive-to lose the Beekmans altogether."
At press time, HUD was still dragging its feet on finalizing the
deal, but that hasn't stopped landlord attorneys all over the country
from taking notice. According to one executive who works with
HUD on developments in several states, the South Bronx bailout is
so exciting it has become a verb. "I've had a lot of lawyers call me
up and say, 'Hey, we want to Beekman our deal,'" he says.
L
ike many of the worst debacles in recent South Bronx
memory, Beekman Houses began as a volatile mixture
of good intentions and government-subsidized greed.
Twenty-eight years ago, under a late-I 960s experiment
to woo private investors and landlords to low-income
housing, Continental Wmgate agreed to rehabilitate three dozen
low-rises scattered around a 12-block area in Mott Haven near
East 141st Street and Cypress Avenue. The company won feder-
al guarantees for its mortgage loans as well as long-term rent
subsidies-but to complete the package, it sold shares in a lim-
ited partnership to help finance the work.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, tax laws permitted
individuals to shelter millions of dollars in income from taxes by
investing in low-income housing (see "Sweet Victory," October
1997). Members of the Tisch family were among thousands of
wealthy people who routinely took advantage of these shelters,
assuming they could safely avoid taxes until the properties could
be sold for a hefty profit-or until they could sell their shares to
others looking for tax deductions.
According to Michael Rooney, a partner in a real estate com-
pany working on the current deal, the Tisch family invested
heavily in Beekman Houses back in the early 1970s, buying as
much as an 80 percent stake in the first three phases of the eight-
phase development.
Some of the Beekman buildings stood alone, alongside
other privately owned properties. Others ran in long lines down
the avenues. To secure and run the apartments as efficiently as
possible, Wingate physically attached many of the buildings,
connecting the hallways through dark tunnels and outdoor
causeways.
On the outside, the management company sealed off dozens
of building entrances, demolishing the tall brownstone steps
where people used to hang out. These were replaced with con-
crete stairs descending into the buildings' basement floors.
The overall effect was to make many of the buildings appear
featureless and institutional. To this day, their bleak facades
dominate the streets where they stand.
Y
et the Beekmans are home to hundreds of families,
many who have lived here for two decades or more.
Delfina Cruz moved into her newly refurbished
apartment 23 years ago, soon after arriving from
Puerto Rico with her parents. It has been the center of
her life ever since. Her brothers and sisters were born and raised
in the complex. Same for her 10 daughters. Her parents died here.
"It was always a Beekman," she says.
Three-quarters of the families who live in her six -story build-
ing moved in at the same time she and her parents did, and the
building is tight, she says. "I love my community."
Arline Parks, who moved in as a little girl, remembers her
childhood fondly. Continental Wingate instituted a vigilant tenant
screening process and required all families to take classes on how
to maintain the apartments and be considerate to their neighbors.
'Ths was a great place to live," she says.
''Then,'' she adds, "the drugs came swooping down."
It was around 1979, as tenants recall, that the trouble really
started. Many of the neighborhood's middle class families had
fled, jobs were increasingly scarce and the South Bronx was
becoming a national symbol of urban decay. The management
ceased its intensive screening. And as the quality of Beekman ten-
ants declined, so did the state of the buildings. Tenants and drug
dealers in the neighborhood began to vandalize the property,
breaking doors and locks as quickly as they could be fixed.
Parks says she has some sympathy for what Wingate's man-
agers faced daily. "You lose it little by little," she says. "You find
CITY LI MITS
yourself repairing the same broken door so many times, it just
stays open."
The open doors eventually admitted one of the most violent,
territorial drug gangs in New York City's history. Beginning in the
late-1980s, having built an industry in Washington Heights on
crack cocaine, the Dominican-dominated Wild Cowboys moved
in, taking advantage of the neighborhood's convenient location a
half-dozen blocks from the ramps of the Major Deegan and
Bruckner expressways.
Armed with submachine guns and a casual attitude toward
homicide, they turned the neighborhood into "a one-factory
town," in the words of a New York Times reporter. Police estimate
the Cowboys and rival gangs populating this area took in receipts
as high as $100,000 a day and were responsible for hundreds of
murders and assaults. Their bloodiest day was December 16,
1991, when gang members executed three rivals and an addict on
the streets around Diego Beekman.
"I would have to go to the store and before I could get back to
my building-my building's right near the corner-I would have
to bow down and stick behind the stoop to keep bullets from hit-
ting me," Wilma Johnson recalls.
'They'd kill off one group, they'd go to jail and another little
group would come on," she adds. "It looked like when they were
ten years old, they'd start recruiting them. They would get
younger and younger, you know."
D
espite living in a fire zone, some tenants worked hard to
improve conditions. Wilma Johnson doggedly pushed
Continental Wmgate's maintenance men to keep the
locks on her building on East 141 st Street. As long as
she asked, maintenance kept fixing the doors, although
other tenants would simply break the locks again or give copies of
the new keys to the dealers.
Johnson was one of the first people tenant organizer Aida
Serrano met in the spring of 1994 when she arrived at Beekman
Houses. Serrano's bosses at the New York State Tenant and
Neighborhood Information Service (NYSTNIS) had followed
the Beekmans over the years and sensed there might be an
opportunity to make inroads there. They
had read about a tenant protest against
Continental Wingate that followed the
tragic death of a young teenager who had
fallen down an elevator shaft. Residents
believed the elevator had been improperly
maintained.
Serrano and her colleagues began
knocking on doors, eventually galvanizing
about a dozen women who agreed it was
time to take Continental Wmgate to task.
They, in turn, started speaking with and
surveying their neighbors. While crime was
an overwhelming problem, the buildings
themselves had also suffered from more
than a decade of lax management. Despite
more than $12 million a year in rent, feder-
al housing subsidies and management fees,
Wingate's maintenance subsidiary, Unidos
Management Inc. , had failed to address
even the most basic problems.
Overtaxed boilers produced little heat,
raw sewage backed up on the ground
floors, rats crawled out of open cupboards
and fell through holes in the ceilings. Piles
of garbage and drug paraphernalia collect-
ed in the hallways and around the build-
OCTOBER 1997
ings. And repairs, when they were done at all, were done on the
cheap. Many tenants to this day still have drafty plastic window
panes, left over from a period when Unidos had given up replac-
ing the glass.
At some point, Serrano recalls, Unidos officials simply began
refusing to meet with the tenants at all.
when Serrano, working closely with tough tenant
Wilma Johnson, realized she needed to petition
a higher authority.
She knew Continental Wingate was seeking an
increase in its federal Section 8 rent subsidy payments.
Johnson asked HUD officials to come tour the buildings and
decide for themselves if the company even deserved the millions
it was already receiving each year.
HUD arrived, led by Helen Dunlap, at the time deputy assis-
tant secretary for multifamily housing. She and others with her
team emerged shocked, angry and determined to act.
Dunlap, tenants say, promised them they would not be forgotten,
by HUD. In July 1995, she notified Continental Wmgate it would
not be getting an increase in its rent subsidy. And, she added dark-
ly, the company's fate might be far worse.
To this day, top officials at Continental Wingate say Dunlap's
evaluation and subsequent actions were unfair. Robert Najarian,
president of Continental Wingate Co., insists that Dunlap wrong-
ly drew conclusions about Unidos' attention to the Beekmans
from a tour of three buildings along East 141 st Street, which were
among the worst in the area.
Najarian volunteers that he offered to raze them, proposing to
replace the vacant lots with "pocket parks." And indeed conditions
were so bad at the time, that HUD reportedly considered doing
just that.
'This is a case where the owner and all the limited partners
took advantage of the system, and the system didn't pay attention
for years," says a housing official who toured the projects at that
time. "In any other situation, I would have walked in, given two
thousand tenants [rent subsidy] vouchers, tom the little fart down
and started from scmtch."
i
I
Wilma Johnson.
president of
Tenants United
f or Better Living.
pressed f or a plan
that would give
residents control
but leave manage-
ment to the profes-
sionals.
--
Landlords (from
left) Victor
Soloman. Jackie
Krygarand
Michael Rooney
plan to turn this
vacant lot into a
park if HUD puts
the Beekmans in
their care.
-
But this was New York City, where taking down any low-
income housing would be a devastating loss and, in all likelihood,
politically impossible. Moreover, Johnson says demolition was
the last thing the residents wanted.
Finally, several months later, in the waning months of 1995,
Dunlap contacted the owners, telling them that HUD was consid-
ering pushing the doomsday button on their investment: foreclo-
sure.
S
hortly after that, Preston Robert Tisch learned his fami-
ly's tax shelter investment was in danger.
He and the other limited partners weren't simply
being asked to give up their investment in the
Beekmans-they were being told that they might not
have any choice. The consequences would be severe. If the prop-
erty went into foreclosure, the limited partners would have to pay
taxes on all of the millions of dollars they had sheltered on their
returns over the years.
Looking at the project's finances, Michael Rooney estimates
that various members of the Tisch family own between $8.5 mil-
lion and $9 million of the project's mortgage. If they were sud-
denly "relieved" of this debt through foreclosure, the Tischs could
be responsible for as much as $4 million in taxes.
Tisch started to ask questions. He contacted Kathryn Wylde,
then president of the New York City Housing Partnership.
According to her, he wanted a reading on what exactly Continental
Wmgate was doing. He was "pissed off' that the company wasn't,
apparently, protecting the limited partners' investment.
"He asked us if we understood what was going on there, and
at the time I didn't," Wylde says.
Wylde asserts that Tisch, alone worth an estimated $2.4 bil-
lion, was not worried about the money. "Frankly, the amount of
exposure [the family] had was chump change to them;' she says.
Rather, "when [Tisch] found out that a project he had invested in
25 years ago was in danger of foreclosure, he was upset. He
didn't want to be associated with such a thing."
Fortunately for TIsch, the tenants recognized an opportunity.
They didn't want to land in court and spend years fighting
Continental Wingate and the limited partners in foreclosure pro-
ceedings. But more importantly, the Beekman tenants feared HUD
would opt to break up the Beekman
Houses, auctioning off the property to
smaller landlords who could prove far
worse than the current owners. A com-
mittee of about two dozen residents,
aided by NYSTNIS, began talking about
a bailout for the landlord.
The idea of releasing the mega-rich
from the tax liability incurred by their
own mismanagement may sound
unpalatable, says Stephen Wallace,
counsel for the Institute for
Responsible Housing Preservation, a
trade group for HUD housing develop-
ers. But it's also the only way to get
these people out of the picture quickly
so the tenants can take over. "If you
could get the limited partners out, you
would see a lot more property trans-
fers," he says. "And I think a lot more
nonprofits and resident councils would
step up and take over."
Wylde, looking to accomplish just
that, met with Johnson and other tenants
who told her they wanted to get rid of Continental Wingate and,
somehow, keep control of the development.
The tenant leaders knew most of the residents didn't want to
manage and own their own buildings-at one point, a group of ten-
ants even mounted pickets outside a meeting where the idea of ten-
ant cooperatives was being discussed. Instead, the resident leaders
wanted some kind of hybrid, where residents would have power but
not much day-to-day responsibility. The idea appealed to Wylde.
"She was quick talkin' ," Johnson says of Wylde today. But, she
adds, Wylde promised her group she could produce a set of land-
lords that they could work with. She was good to her word,
Johnson says.
,
ictor Solomon knows how to deal with chaos and angst.
For years, he taught junior high school, first here in
Mott Haven and then later in Harlem. But, he says with
a laugh, that was nothing compared to what he has
gone through doing this deal with HUD.
Solomon, president of his family's small real estate business,
was among six landlords Wylde recommended to the tenants,
based on their work with the partnership through the
Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program, which transfers ownership
of city-owned, tax-foreclosed properties to private landlords. A
committee of Beekman tenants interviewed them, toured their
properties and, after rejecting one contender, agreed to fight for
them.
The other landlords who made the cut included Rooney, a
consultant who specializes in structuring finance deals for low-
income cooperatives; Jackie Krygar, a well-regarded Harlem
landlord; Nicola DeAcetis, an architect; and Hector Nova, a con-
tractor.
At first, the Housing Partnership's staff proposed that the five
landlords split up the Beekman Houses, each running the build-
ings from their existing businesses. But the tenants vehemently
rejected the idea, reminding the partnership that this was exactly
what they wanted to avoid. So in June 1996, the landlords formed
a new company, Diversified Management.
Over the next year, a team consisting of the tenant leaders,
the Diversified partners, Wingate's Najarian and consultants
hashed out financing, governance and building rehab issues.
CITVLlMITS
All along, HUD's New York City staff was kept apprised of the
work.
Last December, HUD took possession of Continental
Wingate's mortgage, a move that often signals the first step
toward foreclosure. However, HUD staffers had assured the
tenants and Diversified that the agency would instead transfer
the property to them-as long as they could come up with a
stable workout plan. The team, by then, was confident it could
do so.
In the meantime, the tenants saw the Beekmans go through a
remarkable change under HUD's new management. While police
and prosecutors had long ago broken the grip of the Wild
Cowboys, the gangs that replaced them remained a menace. To
deal with this, HUD coordinated a massive bust, sending some
600 city, state and federal officers into the Beekmans' immediate
neighborhood. Authorities arrested more than 60 people, report-
edly dismantling 12 known drug gangs.
ARCO Management, which has an exclusive contract to
manage properties in HUD's possession across the eastern
United States, followed up by hiring a massive security force.
At the beginning of this year, ARCO was spending more than
$800,000 a month in HUD mortgage insurance money to
deploy some 300 guards a day. ARCO reduced the number of
troops after tenant leaders complained the sheer number of
guards was scary and oppressive-and that the money would be
better spent on permanent security features like intercoms,
locks for the lobbies and closed circuit TV cameras. ARCO,
which many tenants criticize for being autocratic and unrespon-
sive to their concerns, has yet to complete this work, but says it
is scheduled to be done during the winter.
l
oW, the South Bronx dealmakers are waiting for the go-
ahead from Washington to begin, in the words of other
landlords' attorneys, Beekman-ing Beekman. HUD had
planned to turn over the Beekman Houses mortgage to
the new ownership team on November 30. Yet as City
Limits went to press, there was no indication of how the feds
intended to move forward.
There were rumors that some HUD officials were worried, that
the deal had been stalled in the upper reaches of the agency.
However a senior HUD official said the agency was still moving
forward.
"You've got some very legitimate partners. And you've got a
lot of broad, philosophical programmatic agreement on where to
go," he said. "But this is a very complex deal and there are some
issues that are being looked at.
''The bottom line is that we believe a lot of good is going to
come from this. But I can't say that we're on the immediate verge
of agreement on all matters."
There is still some patience in the Cypress Avenue offices of
Tenants United for Better Living. But not an endless supply. Not
after the tenants had been burned by HUD's lax oversight of their
landlord for so long.
For 15 years, Johnson says, HUD allowed Gerald Schuster and
the limited investors like Preston Robert Tisch make millions of
dollars off the property here. It was HUD too, who allowed the
Wild Cowboys in with their crack vials and Glocks.
"I think they've done robbed us. I think we got the worst end
of the deal-and HUD let it happen," Johnson says. ''They need
not walk away from here free and easy.
"They should take some responsibility for what happened in
here, and put some more money in," she says. ''They got an invest-
ment in here. They should care about how people are living in
here."
NOVEMBER 1997
Wbat's tlIe Deall
For Arline Parks, tt is a point of pride that the tenants of the Jose de Diego Beekman
Houses never had to take their landlord to court.
In Central Brooklyn, the tenants of Gates Avenue and Medgar Evers Houses filed a civil rack-
eteering sutt against their landlords, a tactic that allowed them to begin reclaiming control of
their homes (see "Sweet Y"lCtory," October 1997). But Parks, a key negotiator for Tenants
Untted for Better 1.iviM, is convinced that the Beekman residents will ultimately gain just as
rooch from ContinentaIlfllJgattt-1ithout having to go tIrough a costly COII't battle.
As City limits went to press, these were the temm of the deal, according to menDers of the
development team:
" HUD wUl invest an estimated $13 nillion-$15 mUlion worth of repair work into Beekman,
bringing aU 38 buUdings into line with federal housing standards. The development will get
new security systems, energy-efficient windows and IIIndreds of important repais on the boil-
ers, roofs and elevators.
" New York City's Housing Development Corporation (HOO), which issues bonds to
finance the preservation of the city's low-income housing, has condttionally agreed to take over
the Beekmans' $27 mHlion mortgage as well as HUD's rehab debt. While HOC is oot
allowed to forgive the mortgage, tt is, in effect, relieving the new management team of all pay-
ment obligations. The hundredS of thousands of dollars the team would otherwise have paid on
the mortgage would instead be freed up for operating and maintenance expenses.
" ContirientaI Yfmgate would give up control of the development. R would remain
as one of the Ined parbJers, owning variously between 2 and 4 percent of the stock in the
property's eight mortgages. The other long time limtted parbters would remain on board, faciJg
00 tax liabiity but receiving no additional benefits or income from the P"liect. This way, Robert
TIsch and the others can avoid paying larRe tax penalties to compensate for the income they
sheltered over the years thanks to their investment.
"The Beekman Houses would, in turn, be taken over by two new general parbters: a for-
profit consortiJm of local landlords koown as Diversified Management, and a oonprofit answering
to a tenant and CORHIIInity-controHed board of directors.
" Diversified would sene as the management receiving more than $800,000 a year
in fees from HUD. The remaining fIIIds from the development's $12 miUion rent roll wUl be
used for Mning and illJ,ll'OviJg the property.
"The partners hope to set aside from $1 to $3 rnIion a year for a reserve tiJJd, to
be used for future capttal p"liects. And tt could also be used to support many of
the prqject's Iow-income tenants should Congress force HUD to phase out Section 8
rent subsidies for the development, something that is already happening at other federaHy subsi-
dized prqjects around the nation.
As a hedge against this uncertainty, the team hopes to graOOally rent apartments
to tenants with higher incomes. According to the plan, in 15 years, two-fifths of the fami-
lies riB be paying market rents. By generating more income from rent, the development wUl be
less dependent on government dollars, supporters say.
Beekman may need every cent tt can get. The development is located in the poorest part of
New York City, and tt coad face very Iigh SOOII'ity and maintenance costs over the years. While
crine has declined more than 60 percent here over the last year, there is 00 glJaI'antee tt wiD
stay that way.
fmBy, there is the . question: shouldn't Continental Wingate and tts laissez-fare
investors be punished fi: for allowing the property to fall into ruin? Y"lCtor Solomon, a pri-
vate real estate manager who is president of the Diversified Management consortium, maintains
the bailout was an ilqlOl'tant part of the deal and worth the cost to preserve the Iow-
income housing.
He and the tenant leaders do believe, however, that the longtime limtted partners-including
media mogul T ISCIt-ihould be required to fork over a hefty contribution to the tenants in c0m-
pensation for all the hardship they have endured.
As for the residents themselves, they are jist eager to be rid of the old regime, so they can
to take control of tbef own destiny.
, We knew that's what Ie wanted to have happen," Parks says. "Now we have
tIiJg that iii work for everybody." -IN
-
I
fj HIT THE CITY LIMITS WEBPAGE AND HIT THE STREETS
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... -------.. resource guide for community-based
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Make your computer a community resource at City Limits Online
OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE FELLOWSHIPS PROGRAM
The Open Society Institute (OSI), a private operating foundation established and supported by George Soros to
foster the development of open societies around the world, invites Letters of Inquiry for Individual Project
Fellowships, awarded to individuals - writers, scholars and others from a wide variety of professions - pursuing
research, writing or other efforts on issues of importance to promoting an open society either in the United States or
internationally. Areas of particular interest include, but are not limited to:
the promotion of reproductive health and choice
community participation in reforming public education for inner city youth
non-commercial approaches to arts, journalism and professions such as law and medicine
immigration and civic identity
the impact on the poor of the devolution of welfare responsibility to the states
expanding democratic participation
The application process begins with a two-page Letter of Inquiry and a resume or Cv.
There are no application forms. Please do not send unsolicited materials.
CITVLlMI1S
To Market,
To Market?
"The Inner City: Urban Poverty
and Economic Development in
the Next Century," edited by
Thomas D. Boston and Catherine
L. Ross, Transaction Publishers,
1997,357 pages, $24.95.
I
n 1995, Michael Porter, a Harvard professor
and well-known international business con-
sultant, published an influential essay on urban revitaliza-
tion in the Harvard Business Review titled "The
Competitive Advantage of the Inner City." Porter wrote
that a brighter future for the urban core can be found only
through the market, and government and nonprofit programs
that ignore or hinder the need for increased business activity are
counterproductive. Such programs as public assistance, housing
aid and food stamps "undermine" a coherent economic strate-
gy. He called, instead, for a "radically different approach" cre-
ated by private, for-profit initiatives.
"We must stop trying to cure the inner city's problems by
perpetually increasing social investment and hoping for eco-
nomic activity to follow," he wrote. Instead, the inner city has
to leverage its unique economic advantages: strategic location,
human resources, unmet local demand, and the capacity to
become integrated into regional clusters.
Porter's article launched a flurry of discussion and dis-
agreement among academics and community-based organiza-
tions, some of which was captured in a special issue of The
Review of Black Political Economy last year. ''The Inner City"
is a reprint of this issue, a highly useful and readable critique
of Porter's argument that also provides an alternative vision of
economic development.
In the opening chapter, Susan Fainstein and Mia Gray,
respectively a professor and Ph.D. candidate of Urban Planning
and Policy Development at Rutgers University, point out that
government efforts have consistently tried, but failed, to bring
capital back to the inner cities in precisely the ways Porter out-
lines-reduced regulations, denuded environmental laws and
massive tax incentives. After the Reagan-Bush years, they write,
his plaints about overreaching social programs and the lack of
inducements to business are "nothing short of astonishing."
Gary Dymski, a professor of economics at the University of
California, Riverside, goes further, noting that the market forces
Porter is so fond of promoting have devastated inner cities. He
also notes that racism-hardly mentioned by Porter--can crip-
ple market incentives (''Discrimination is not economically self-
NOVEMBER 1997
--.... -... - ~ ... ".-
liquidating," he writes-a nice phrase) and that the political
climate is hostile to pro-inner city initiatives.
The political climate is not hostile to creating a "good
business climate" with billions of dollars in tax incentives
going to large corporations in Midtown and Wall Street. In
fact, as Arnold Graf, a staffer at the
Industrial Areas Foundation, writes, this
approach "has lead to a multibillion dollar
Marshall Plan for the nation's downtowns,
but has done little for the working poor and
the inner-city neighborhoods in which they
reside." In other words, without pressure
on corporations to share their gains, little
money finds its way into the pockets of
workers.
There is such a barrage of intelligent
criticism in this volume that one wonders
how Porter can maintain his composure
in his response. Not to worry-with a
few examples, he seems able to justify
his thinking to himself, tossing off state-
ments like, "The concentration of
poverty in inner cities has led to many pro-
grams to serve the poor, which ... attract more poor families."
One wonders where the poor were living before they moved to
the inner cities to take advantage of government largesse.
Certainly not in our heavily subsidized suburbs.
As a model for criticism of one significant article, this vol-
ume is exemplary, and it is also very useful as an overview and
analysis of economic development over the past few decades,
including relevant issues such as white flight and subsequent
disinvestment. I particularly liked the chapter by the Georgia
Institute of Technology's David S. Sawicki and Mitch Moody,
which makes a cogent argument for the need of both place-
based policies, which endeavor to funnel investment to a spe-
cific area, and people-based policies, which invest in the local
population. Porter's insistence on pure place-based market
strategies is one of his philosophy's greatest weaknesses.
As the editors acknowledge, however, the book is short on
empirical findings or research results. In this regard, contribu-
tions from Anthony Downs, John Mollenkopf and other obvi-
ous missing experts would have been welcome. (One exception
is the chapter discussing in some detail how the Urban
Investment Strategies Center at the University of North
Carolina draws on multiple assets of the community and uni-
versity to improve inner city neighborhoods.) I also would have
liked to see an author discuss Porter's annoyed attitude toward
corporate liability for environmental hazards.
The good news is that Michael Porter has jumpstarted the
debate on economic development in the inner city. The bad
news is that his so-called radical prescriptions are one more
rationale for trickle-down economics: Help the rich and trust
the market to help the poor. Unfortunately, that has already
done enough to redistribute wealth to the top and bring devas-
tation to the bottom .
Dr. John E. Seley is a Professor of Urban Studies and
Environmental Psychology at the City University of New York
and the co-director of Community Studies of New York
Inc'/INFOSHARE.
REVIEW
-
Rudy's Nonprofiteers
VITAL STATISTICS
A
s the self-styled government reinventors of the
Giuliani administration moved into City HaJJ in
1994, administrators of nonprofit groups around
town spoke quietly about their greatest fears-that
their programs wouldn't fit the new political agenda
and would be marginalized or cut from the city budget altogether.
E
e
III
e
a.
';

a.
t
tii
SURVIVAL OF THE BICCEST
SOME WOM, SOME LOST
Mental Health
Seniors
Homeless
Day Care
Employment
Child Welfare
Youth Services
But overall, as a new analysis of city contracting and budget
data reveals, Giuliani didn't gut the city's human services contract
budget so much as he dramaticaJJy shifted government priorities.
Between fiscal year 1993-the penultimate Dinkins budget-and
FY1996, the second Giuliani budget, city contracts to nonprofits
decreased by only half a percent, or $6 million.
The two-part study by the Arete Corporation, "Winners and
Losers, a Study of Budget Changes on Social Services and
Community Districts in New York City, 1993-1996," includes a
analysis of more than 6,000 city human service contracts with
nonprofits, as well as a detailed survey of the impact of contract
and budget changes on 57 organizations in three neighborhoods.
The authors found that smaJJ organizations tended to drop from
the city contract budget like fleas from a puppy in a pet wash. Of
the smaJJest 310 organizations with city contracts in 1993, fewer
than half still had one in 1996.
Youth programs were the hardest
hit. By 1996, the sector had been deci-
mated by a 42 percent decline in con-
tract funding, amounting to a loss of
$45 million. The study went beyond
straightforward Department of Youth
Services contracts and looked at sum-
mer youth employment and other relat-
ed programs, as well.
On the other hand, there was a 45
percent increase in contract funding for
the "employment" sector-mostly
-60% -40% -20% 0% 20% 40% 60%
accounted for by $20 million in new
welfare and workfare-related contracts.
MAMHAnAM-CEMTRIC CITY
Staten Island
Queens
Brooklyn
$166
Bronx $125
Manhattan $389
$0 $100 $200 $300 $400
per capita dollars for social services, by workslte, 1996
The other stunning revelation is the
apparent favoritism enjoyed by
Manhattan communities. By analyzing
the actual worksite for each of the city's
human services contracts, Arete found
that Manhattan enjoys more than double
the per-capita human service funding of
any other borough. Queens is at the bot-
tom of the chart with less than one-sev-
enth of its per capita contract support.
When Newsday's Rob Polner wrote
about the disparity in mid-October, city
Budget Director Joe Lhota charged that
Arete's report was "trash" and "fiction"
while asserting that every borough
receives its fair share. But the report
leaves little doubt that the outer bor-
0ughs get short shrift. The Arete
Corporation can be reached at (212)
260-9515. -Andrew White
CITY LIMITS
Mothers, Cuns
and Wall Street
W.lfar.-to-Work:
Women Breaking Barriers
I
t's not exactly breaking news that welfare refonn is shred-
ding the social safety net. Perhaps you don't know, howev-
er, that child poverty rates dropped 45 percent from 1960 to
1969, then rose 63 percent over the last 20 years. Or that 54 per-
cent of poor families are sustained by women alone. A work-
book recently released by the D.C.-based Wider Opportunities
for Women, "Six Strategies for Self-Sufficiency," gives specific
programs to help women get beyond statistics like this, and then
tells you how to get them implemented.
The book starts with an overview of the current situation and
what strategies might create change, including a handy ''Ten
Lessons for Successful State Policy Change." Like the rest of
the book, this section is clear and concise.
The strategies themselves-ranging from nontraditional
employment opportunities to Individual Development Accounts
that work like an IRA but allow the individual to use the money
for training or starting a small business-are carefully
explained, including case studies and background on where the
ideas have been tried. Then each chapter outlines how a group
can lobby for support of its strategy at the state level.
"Six Strategies for Self-Sufficiency," $30, WOW, (202) 638-
3143.
Nonprofit Salarl":
Scratching the Suiface
T
here's some pretty amazing numbers in ''To Profit or
Not-to-Profit: An Examination of Executive
Compensation in Not-for-Profit Organizations
Contracting with New York City Agencies," a recent report
researched and written by City Council staff for Thomas
Ognibene, the body's minority leader. Just be careful before
blowing them out of proportion.
For example, the executive summary states that nonprofits
with less than a $5 million budget paid their executive directors
a median of $70,422-or 51 percent more than their counter-
parts across the country. In addition, it states, "Over 29 percent
of all NFPs paid their executive directors more than the typical
City Commissioner.. .. "
Problem is, despite the title, this report is limited to non-
profits that have contracts of more than $2 million with one of
four city agencies. The entire report is built on research of only
56 nonprofits, out of a universe of 2,646 that hold city contracts.
True, it's entertaining to learn how much the big cheese earns at
each of these few dozen agencies. But this report doesn't really
give any infonnation on which to make policy or to judge NFPs
in general. Let's hope no one tries.
Still, there is some educational material here. Of note is a
section that documents how 34 of 37 nonprofit agencies sur-
veyed refused to allow a caller access to their annual financial
reports and tax returns. Goes to show how badly most nonprof-
NOVEMBER 1997
its need a lesson in tax law: 501 (c)3 nonprofits are required by
law to disclose this infonnation to anyone who seeks it, as long
as basic procedures are followed.
''To Profit or Not-to-Profit," free, Office of Oversight and
Investigation, Council of the City of New York, (212) 788-7100.
Cops and Communltl":
Teaching Accountability
H
ow much did expenditures for law enforcement increase
from 1982 to 1990? What did Hubert Williams, president
of the Police Foundation, cite as the major cause of urban
rebellions? What was the fate of most police officers accused of
brutality, according to a Gannett News Service Study?
Questions such as these are part of a quiz found in "Justice
by the People," a new workbook to help urban activists seek-
ing to improve police accountability. Residents of low-income
and minority communities are often divided along lines of
class, age, race and ethnicity when it comes to dealing with the
local precinct. But during the last couple of years, five com-
munity groups around the country have experimented with
techniques for overcoming these divisions while educating
local residents about police and criminal justice issues; this
workbook is the fruit of their labor.
"Justice by the People" explains methods for teaching such
subjects as civilian oversight, police misconduct, styles of
policing, sentencing and citizens' rights, as well as giving the
answers to the above questions: a) from $3 billion to $41.5 bil-
lion, b) excessive use of (police) force, c) they were promoted.
"Justice by the People;' $25, Chardon Press, (510) 704-8714.
Th. Labor Economy:
Inflationary Pressure Drop
D
o pay raises for workers inevitably lead to higher prices?
Not as much as free-marketeers would have us believe,
according to an article in the September issue of
"Current Issues in Economics and Fmance," published by the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The study found that wage
increases in labor-sensitive service industries, like restaurants,
entertainment and transportation, often drive inflation. But more
significantly, the authors contend that wage increases in manu-
facturing-related industries, such as cars and clothes, rarely have
a similar effect-mainly because of stiff competition.
If hardcore economic number crunching is what you crave,
this newsletter will delight. It certainly isn't written by or for
those working on poverty issues, but it does provide some of
the latest economic theories-a glimpse into the mechanisms
that fuel Wall Street and the rest of the economy. And articles
like the "Do Rising Labor Costs Trigger Higher Inflation?"
give infonnation that allows you to argue with the market
mavens on their own turf.
"Current Issues in Economics and Finance," free, (212)
720-6130, http://www.ny.frb.org.
AMMO
CoNSULTANT SER'{lCES
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204 East 93rd Street, Suite 3A
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IRWIN NESOFF ASSOCIATES
management consulting for non-profits
Providing 0 lull-ronge 01 monogement support services lor
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20 St. Johns Place, Brooklyn, New York 11217 (718) 636-6087
Does your nonprofit need corporate, real estate,
tax or other business legal services?
Lawyers Alliance for New York has a staff of skilled lawyers
and a roster of 400 volunteer attorneys from leading NY firms.
We specialize in providing free or low-cost legal services to non-
profit corporations. We also offer helpful publications and work-
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To find out if we can help your nonprofit. call 212219-1800
99 Hudson Street New York, NY 10013
Lawyers Alliance
for New York
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-Profit Law
Title and loan closings 0 All city housing programs
Mutual housing associations 0 Cooperative conversions
Advice to low income co-op boards of directors
100 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, (718) 624-6850
-
LAWRENCE H. McGAUGHEY
Attorney at Law
Meeting the challenges of affordable housing for 20 years.
Providing legal services in the areas of General Real Estate,
Business, Trust & Estates, and Elder Law.
21 7 Broadway, Suite 610
New York, NY 10007
(212) 513-0981
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CITY LIMITS
30&AUY

TENANT ORGANIZER. Community-based organization in Central Harlem is
seeking an experienced tenant organizer to provide technical assistance and
guidance to tenants in the target area of the GBO; organize residents in the
formation of block associations and the development of open spaces; and
interface with social service and community organizations. Requirements:
High school diploma plus some college. At least 3 years of community orga-
nizing experience. Strong verbal and written communication skills as well as
computer skills. Some knowledge of NYC and NYS programs helpful. Salary
to $25,000 commensurate with experience. Excellent health benefits. Send
resume to B. Smith, ADC, 131 W. 138th St., NYC 10030.
PROJECT DEVROPER. Neighborhood Center in Jamaica at Dominican
Commercial HS desires creative self-starting person with experience in
administration, education, community organizing to implement plans for a
multi-service Neighborhood Center in Jamaica, Queens. Responsibil ities
include: working with local agencies and administrator of school , grant writ-
ing, supervision, administration of center. Bachelor' s degree, full/part
time. Job description available: 516-842-6037. Resume to: Regina Corde
Hockenberry, OP, St. Anselm' s, 351 83rd Street, Brooklyn, NY 11209.
EVIC110N PREVENTION CASE MANAGERS. CFRC is hiring Case Managers for
our eviction prevention project. Budget/housing reviews, resolve evictions,
make referrals. Qualifications: familiarity with welfare benefits, housing
issues. Must have two years' experience serving poor; housing experience
preferred; writing required. Salary $27,500. Full medical, dental, family cov-
erage. Affirmative action employer. Resume to: CFRC, Attn: German Tejeda,
90 Washington St., 27th floor, NYC 10006. Fax: 212-344-1422.
DIRECTOR OF SUPPORT SERVICES. Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH),
a national nonprofit financial and technical assistance organization seeks
highly motivated and creative social service professional for the position of
Director of Support Services. Responsible for providing technical assis-
tance and support in social service planning and delivery to CSH offices
and community-based nonprofit organizations around the country. Requires
BA degree and minimum five years of experience in administration, super-
vision, and/or program development in the delivery of mental health or
other support services. Experience with planning and delivery of services
to formerly homeless persons and familiarity and experience with support-
ive housing settings strongly preferred. Experience with managed care deliv-
ery and financing systems a plus. Must be computer literate and have
excellent written and verbal communication skills including public speaking.
The successful candidate will have a proven ability to work collaboratively
with professional staff, government agencies and community-based organi-
zations and be skilled in training, facilitating discussion, and building con-
sensus. Travel required. Competitive salary and excellent benefits. (EOE
M/F/DjV) Send resume and cover letter with salary requirements to Dir. of
Ops., CSH, 342 Madison Ave., Suite 505, NYC 10173.
PART-TIME FUNDRAISER. JusticeWorks Community, an organization with ser-
vices and advocacy focused on women prisoners, ex-prisoners and their
children, seeks a part-time fundraiser. Responsibil ities include researching
current, lapsed and potential supporters, developing and implementing
strategies for approaching potential granters, writing and submitting pro-
posals, follow-up, and report-writing. Fundraising experience, excellent writ-
ing skills and computer proficiency are required. Letter of interest with
resume to Mary-Elizabeth Fitzgerald, JusticeWorks Community, 1012 Eighth
Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11215.
PIT DIRECTOR OF WOMEN IN PRISON PROJECT. Seeking experienced activist
to work 3 to 3 1/2 days a week developing and initiating advocacy strate-
gies; preparing policy papers and working with government agencies and
the media; organizing lobby days; preparing public education materials;
fundraising. Must write well, communicate effectively. Experience in crimi-
nal justice, advocacy and women' s issues is preferred, but not required.
Salary commensurate with experience, plus benefits. Resume and writing
samples to Robert Gangi, Executive Director, Correctional Association of
New York, 135 East 15th Street, New York, NY 10003.
PROGRAM ASSISTANT for Manager of program that provides loans and advi-
sory services to NY non profits for their facilities. Assistant will be initial
client contact, assist in program administration and publicity, maintain data-
base. Knowledge of MS Word, Excel , Access a plus, also familiarity/interest
in nonprofits. College degree, 3+ years work experience. Salary mid-high
NOVEMBER 1997
twenties. Send/fax cover letter/resume to: Chris Jenkins, Nonprofit Facilities
Fund, 70 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018. Fax 212-268-8653.
COMMUNnY ORGANIZERS. The Training Institute for Careers in Organizing
seeks people eager to fight for social justice as community organizers. TICO
is a 12-week, full-time apprenticeship providing field and classroom expo
Stipend $920/month. Runs Jan. through March. Permanent positions avail.
at end of program. Call TlCO at 718-584-0515.
The Jericho Project, a nonprofit supportive housing provider for formerly
homeless substance abusers, seeks to fill two positions: MANAGER,
Computer Learning Center. Responsible for marketing, management and
educational aspects of new nonprofit business in Central Harlem offering
training and services to Jericho residents and the Harlem community.
Extensive knowledge of computer networks, Microsoft software and the
Internet is required. Must also possess good management, marketing and
community relations skills. SITE DIRECTOR. Responsible for managing our
West 94th Street site serving 64 men and women. Duties include over-
seeing clinical services, managing residents' needs, supervising three pro-
gram staff, and fulfilling reporting and administrative requirements. Must
have B.S. or M.S. in Social Work or related field and several years relevant
work experience. Experience with substance abusers and homeless popu-
lations a strong plus. Salaries commensurate with experience. Please mail
or fax resumes to: The Jericho Project, 891 Amsterdam Ave. , NYC 10025.
Fax: 212-865-6554.
COMMUNnY REPORTER/EDITOR The Norwood News, a bi-weekly Bronx com-
munity newspaper that is expanding to cover more neighborhoods, seeks
an enthusiastic reporter/deputy editor with a commitment to community
journalism. Qualifications: 1-2 years writing, reporting experience; fluent
Spanish speaker preferred; familiarity with Quark Xpress a plus. Salary:
competitive salary commensurate with experience; excellent benefits. Send
cover letter, resume and clips to: Jordan Moss, Norwood News, 75 E.
208th St., Bronx, NY 10467.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR position available for Child Welfare Organizing Project,
an organization dedicated to improving services provided by the child wel-
fare system through organized client involvement and collective advocacy.
Knowledge of NYC child welfare system and prior fundraising experience
critical. Salary $40,000-$50,000. Position available immediately. Send
resumes and writing samples to: CWOP Search Committee, c/o Community
Resource Exchange, 90 Washington St. , NYC 10006.
DEVElOPMENT CONSULTANT sought by the Center for Anti-Violence
Education, a progressive, mid-sized community-based nonprOfit. Will coor-
dinate all aspects of individual giving program. 10 hours a week for six
months, although some flexibility possible. Please send cover letter, hourly
rate, and resume to Annie Ellman, CAE, 421 Fifth Ave., Brooklyn, NY
11215.
GRANT WRITER, part time, needed to research and write grants for Mercy
Center, a women's center in the South Bronx. Grants include Family Life
Skills, Job Training, Leadership Development. Hours, work location and
terms are flexible. Send resume and writing sample to Mary Ann Dirr,
Executive Director, Mercy Center, 413 East 144 St., Bronx, NY 10454, 718-
993-2789, Fax 718-402-1594.
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, CAREER PlANNING to develop programs and counsel
students and graduates of leading public service law school on range of
career developmental issues. Law degree and public interest experience
preferred, excellent organizational, writing, communication skills required,
computer literacy helpful. Competitive salary commensurate with experi-
ence. Write for full description or submit resume and brief cover letter to:
CUNY Law School, Attn: Franklin Siegel, 65-21 Main Street, Rushing, NY
11367. EOE M/F/DjV.
MARKETING COMMUNICA11ONS SUPPORT. Nonprofit organization dealing
w/community issues needs experienced 5 years+ communicator for 25-30
hrs/wk aSSisting Director. Copy/script management, press clipping and
analysiS, event detailing, management of free lancers and outside vendors.
BA required, writing skill , experience in all types of media, proficiency w/MS
Word, Access, Publisher. Resume and writing sample: Attn: Comm,
Citizens Committee for NYC, 305 7th Ave., NYC 10001.
More Job Ads on page 39
Fly
SPARE CHANGE
Thrush
y the time you are reading this Ruth Messinger will have begun preparing for that month-long
trip to the Andes she always wanted to take but could never find the time to make. (Or, in my
late October fevered dreams, she stands triumphant in front of the flashbulbs, brandishing a
copy of the New York Post with the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman II.")
Assuming she has lost, expect to hear the renewed refrain
that, yet again, New York liberals have been dealt their final
death blow. For the past six months, the Post editorial page has
practically been devoted full time to getting out this very mes-
sage. Even in less frothy quarters, the subject of this deadness
has become so rote it should have its own line in the Mayor's
Management Report ("Clean-up of Mortified Liberals has
increased by 23 percent in the first Quarter of 1998.").
It has become so common, in fact, that one begins to suspect
it's all a hoax.
Consider The New Yorker's Jim Traub, who penned this sum-
mer in the journal Social Policy: "Anyone who wishes to restore
our sense of faith in urban government must begin with the
humble recognition of the failures that helped discredit big city
liberalism in the first place-the excessive focus on civilliber-
ties to the detriment of civil society, nonchalance about issues of
effectiveness and productivity, and an ideological aversion to
the marketplace."
Thus, Traub, like so many "urban pragmatists," pumps a cou-
ple more superfluous slugs into the corpse of The New York
Liberal, the extinct Dodo Bird of American politics. You know
the species-they destroyed New York by encouraging teenage
promiscuity through the building of huge public housing projects
where Legal Aid lawyers halted police searches and then suc-
cessfully sued for costly health care programs for babies who
were, in due time, handed free bus passes to attend public school
classes where Christopher
Columbus was pilloried as
Orville Faubus with an Italian
accent.
The fact that such a creature
never existed has never stopped
anyone from killing it, digging
it back up, and repeatedly re-
killing it.
Now, everyone is pronounc-
ing the death of liberalism in
the city as if they were the first
ones ever to discover the idea.
This, at a time when pragmatic
liberals are, overwhelmingly,
the very people trying to steer a
pragmatic course between effi-
ciency and the humane operation of government.
Yet from reading the Traubian bellowings (I could just have
easily singled out Joe Klein, Eric Breindel, Mike Tomasky, Jim
Sleeper, Heather MacDonald, Maggie Gallagher or Ray
Kerrison) you'd think liberals were as prolific as rats and as
pestilent as Manhattan Borough Presidents.
Messinger was easy to attack, but no one seems to have
noticed she's framed the most important question urban man-
agers face in the 1990s: If money doesn't solve every problem,
then how does not spending money solve every problem?
Consider too, her political evolution. In the 1970s, she sup-
ported welfare on demand. In the 1990s, she backs Workfare in
principle, but points out that job training needs to be part of the
package. In the 1970s she invited a murderous Attica inmate over
for tea. In the 1990s she supports Giuliani's basic quality-of-life
and policing initiatives, but believes the city needs to hold cops
accountable for their improvisational plumbing expeditions.
Alas, to Traub, this isn't good enough-he wants her
plucked, poached and Perdued anyway. "[Hler conversion to
the cause of reform seems belated, half-hearted and transpar-
ently opportunistic."
When logic fails, revert to Dodo-cide. Take Traub's accu-
sation that liberals are the enemies of privatization of govern-
ment services. In reality, they have been the most consistent
proponents-and greatest beneficiaries-of government
devolution. After all, who runs the most efficient housing
organizations in New York?
Dodos. The most innovative
bootstraps credit unions?
Dodos. Foundations? Eco-
nomic development efforts?
Alternative-to-incarceration
programs? Dodos, Dodos,
Dodos.
Ironically, the most offen-
sive supposed Dodo behav-
iors-soaring high above the
clouds, pooping down on the
toilers at street level, flying
from one flimsy ideological
perch to the next-have now
become the hallmark of the
Neo-Cons .
CITY LIMITS
SOAAD

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR. The New York Mortgage Coalition seeks a multi-tal-
ented individual to assist the Executive Director. The Coalition is a collab-
orative effort between 10 lending institutions and 7 non-profits providing
home ownership education to low-moderate income borrowers in NYC. L.I. .
and Westchester. Requirements: strong administrative and organizational
skills; proficiency in Microsoft Word and Excel ; strong communication and
writing skills; familiarity with mortgage finance or real estate a plus;
Bachelor's degree preferred. Salary $26-30K range. Fax resume and cover
letter to Eric Powell at 212-344-3344.
STAFF ASSOCIATE. Nationally respected and innovative health care. employ-
ment development organization seeks a Staff Associate to support program.
management and office functions. Responsibilities: producing reports. let-
ters and documents; performing basic research for development and advo-
cacy work; responding to organizational inquiries; and supporting public rela-
tions activities. Receptionist/other clerical functions. Ideal candidate is:
well-organized and self-initiating; adept at managing administrative details
and interested in welfare-to-work. community health or women's economic
issues. Minimum 3 years strong administrative experience and advanced
facility with Microsoft Office and Excel required. Write: Peggy Powell,
Executive Administrator. Home Care Associates Training Institute. 349 East
149th Street. Bronx. New York 10451. People of color encouraged to apply.
PROJECT MANAGER. Preserve NJ's urban and rural open spaces using non-
profit land acquisition techniques. Tasks include: researching projects;
landowner outreach and negotiations; supervision of consultants; and
conveyance to public agencies or other permanent stewards. Work with
staff. community groups. and schools to develop educational program-
ming for gardening/ playground projects. Generate revenues by negotiat-
ing bargain sales. organizing constituency support for agency funding.
and private-sector fundraising. Identify geographical areas of importance
and market Trust for Public Land to relevant agencies; develop portfolio
of potentials; and respond to acquisition inquiries. Build public aware-
ness of TPL through outreach events. Moderate/ heavy travel. Some
overtime. Qualifications: BA. Four years real estate/ land trust experi-
ence or equivalent. Demonstrated understanding of real property and tax
law. land use planning. and governmental land acquisition procedures.
Ability to work on complex transactions with moderate supervision. initi-
ate fund raiSing. and mentor project staff. Excellent communication and
negotiation skills. Ability to combine sound business sense with com-
mitment to land preservation. Resumes to: Field Office Director. Trust for
Public Land. 1095 Mt. Kemble Avenue. Morristown. NJ 07960.
STAFF ATTORNEY. The Adult Home Advocacy Project of MFY Legal
Services. Inc. is hiring a full-time staff attorney to begin November 1.
1997, to represent residents of adult homes in the five boroughs of New
York City and to act as co-counsel in cases initiated by advocates in
Westchester and Rockland counties. The attorney will provide legal
advice and representation to reSidents, of adult homes on a variety of
issues related to their status as adult home reSidents. including war-
ranty of habitability and benefits issues. The attorney will also do out-
reach and training to residents and case workers on legal issues affect-
ing the residents. This work is done in conjunction with an experienced
home organizer and other project staff. Salary. pursuant to a collective
bargaining agreement. depends on the year of law school graduation.
with excellent fringe benefits. Two years experience in working with ben-
efits and persons with mental illness preferred. Please send cover let-
ter. resume and brief writing sample to: Olive Karen Stamm. MFY Legal
Services, Inc . 299 Broadway. 4th Floor. New York. NY 10007. MFY
Legal Services is an equal opportunity employer. Women. minorities and
the handicapped are encouraged to apply.
Public interest law firm seeks a DIRECTOR for Pro Bono Referral / Community
Outreach. Spanish speaking desirable. Salary competitive. exc. benefits.
Apply by 11/ 7. Send resume: NYLPI . 30 W. 21 St . 9th Floor. NYC 10010.
ANHD has office space available for 2-3 people-ideal for a small nonprof-
it organization. Use of copy and fax machine. Two desks and phone jack
also available. Rent negotiable. Call Maruja at 212-463-9600 for more
details.
LET US DO A FREE EVALUATION
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