A

r the time being, Governor George Pataki could not be happier.

The federal government is giving New York State a big fat $450 mil-
lion hike in welfare money to spend over the next 12 months. Why?
Because Congress used 1994-1995 budget numbers to calculate how
much the states should receive under the new federal welfare law. Since
there were more people on public assistance at that time than there are
.. -........... - ,..., ...... -
EDITORIAL
today, New York gets the extra money.
Pataki is taking the promise of extra cash as an
opportunity to drive state welfare policy full
speed into a hairpin turn. Under the governor's
proposal, state welfare benefit levels would be
cut for most families between 10 percent and 45
percent, depending on how long they are on the
rolls. Instead of cash support, the governor offers
vows of great sincerity, promising that New York will invest sufficient
money in day care andjob programs to move these families into the
labor force.
All this might be believable, except for the fact that New York State
has never spent all the money the federal government placed at its dis-
posal for developing decent welfare-to-jobs programs in years past. In
1994, more than 10 percent of the funds offered to New York by the fed-
eral welfare job training program remained unclaimed because the
state didn't want to pick up extra administrative costs of the program.
Now New York will receive up to $2.3 billion-all its federal welfare
grant-to do with as it pleases. Based on past experience, it's a safe bet
Albany's politicians will break the promise of creating enough effective,
large-scale employment and day care programs to make "welfare-to
work" more than just a cynical joke on the poor.
In fact, there is more reason to believe New York will move in the
opposite direction. Pataki 's proposed welfare plan is more punitive than
the federal law, thanks to his proposal to cut welfare fami lies' annual
cash income from the $6,900 range (for a family of four) to as low as
$3,800 a year-even before the five-year limit kicks in. The need for
employment supports will be extraordinary.
A strong new report from the National Association of Child
Advocates, "Ready, Willing and Able? What the Record Shows About
State Investments in Children, 1990-1995," reads like a cautionary tale
against welfare devolution. In the past, when states have been given
handfuls offederal money to spend "creatively," they have shirked their
responsibilities toward low-income people. Thankfully, federal rules
and guidelines have always made sure the state safety net was kept in
place. That's history now.
And as for that extra $450 million? Pataki plans to spread much of it
around to the municipalities right away. But the federal welfare block
grants to states won't be increasing in years to come, no matter what
happens to the economy. Better put that money somewhere safe-it will
be needed down the road.
Andrew White
Editor
City Limits
Volume XXI Number 10
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CITY LIMITS
DECEMBER 1996
FEATURES
Coney Island's Wild Ride
Long isolated, neglected and prey to drug thugs and joblessness, the
palisade of projects on Brooklyn's Riviera are making a startling
comeback, thanks to better policing and stricter controls over who
gets apartments. But Coney Island's future is still up in the air.
By Glenn Thrush and Stuart Miller
Courting Scandal ~
Last February, a Manhattan housing court judge pleaded guilty to
taking payoffs from landlords in the bathroom outside his courtroom.
Secret court documents now show how easily corruption fits with the
culture of Housing Court-and how long a road would-be reformers
must tread. By Matthew Goldstein
Time Forgotten ~
Morrisania Hospital's rebirth in the South Bronx is a welcome
change for the neighborhood-but it also signals the passing of a
once-glorious symbol of urban hope. By Camilo Jose Vergara
PIPELINES
Ballot Brigade ~
In the past, getting voters to the polls has been the job of party regulars.
But in November, Metro IAF assembled an army of precinct captains
who got out the vote in the name of community power. By Robin Epstein
Enemies, A Housing Story ~
Neighborhood housing groups have cut their teeth in tenant organizing,
but now a city program aimed at the grassroots is turning them from
tenant tigers into landlord-loving lambs. By Glenn Thrush
Blunting Sharpton ~
Giuliani and the Democrat mayoral wannabes are trying to write off
Rev. Al as City Hall's spoiler, but mainstream black politicians can't
afford to ignore his influence with their voters. By Ron Howell
Cityview
Justice in Flames
Review
Special Deliveries
Briefs
A Tempest in Harlem
Keeping Families Whole
Editorial
COMMENTARY
DEPARTMENTS
7 Letters
Job Ads
Professional
2 Directory
127
By Max Block
128
By Ariel Gore
5
29
30
o CHASE
Chase is pleased to announce
the rollout of a comprehensive
HOMEBUYER
EDUCATION PROGRAM
which establishes working relationships between
Chase Manhattan Bank,
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Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp.,
and local Chase and ACORN offices
and will provide:
LOAN COUNSELING
OUTREACH
AND REFERRALS
In Austin, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Miami, Los Angeles,
Jersey City, Bridgeport, New Orleans, and New York City.
November, 1996
CITY LIMITS
HI.tory L on I
Robin Epstein's article on collaborative
organizing as practiced by Michael Eichler
('The De-Activist," October 1996) would
benefit from historical perspective.
Partnership with power grew out of settle-
ment house efforts in the late 19th century,
when executives enlisted the rich to make
common cause with the oppressed.
Henry Street Settlement Director Helen
Hall 's interest in community betterment in
the 1960s gave rise to Mobilization for
Youth on the Lower East Side. The group's
original design involved an Eichler-style
board which represented the
Establishment, including the mayor, and a
confrontational, Alinsky-style staff organi-
zation. The two could not live in the same
house. Staff were attacked as Communists.
I became an executive maintaining some
street-level organizing, but with less
emphasis on confrontation and more on
service delivery.
Mobilization's original collaborative
design was adopted by President
Kennedy's Committee on Juvenile
Delinquency, on which I served. Cities
across the country established Eichler-
type boards. These were the ancestors of
the War on Poverty's Council Against
Poverty, which, seeking maximum feasi-
ble participation of the poor, encouraged
Alinsky-style organizations-until
Congress rebelled and cut funding.
The moral: both methods serve a com-
mon purpose. Collaboration may be stim-
ulated by confrontation. And without at
least the threat of confrontation, what you
can do by collaboration is severely limited.
Bertram Beck
Graduate School of Social Service
Fordham University
HI.tory L on II
This letter is prompted by your wonder-
fully titled article, 'The De-Activist." For
some time I've been meaning to write and
tell you how much I enjoy your magazine,
especially your pieces on organizing.
"Consensus Organizing" or its equiva-
lent, is not new. The "dual approach" was
proposed in mainline Protestant circles in
the 1960s as a consensus-building alterna-
ti ve to Alinsky, suggesting partnerships
between the wealthy and inner-city
churches. The continuing decline in many
Americans' standard of living and the
paternalism that characterized these efforts
DECEMBER 1996
sent them to the dust-bin of history.
The 1920s' partnerships between
company unions and their employers
were quickly laid to rest by the
Depression. In the post-World War II era,
with the CIO's expulsion of left-wing
unions and labor 's search for respectabil-
ity, such approaches made a comeback in
"joint" efforts between management and
labor. The unions were generally "junior
partners" and workers ended up on the
short end.
Earlier still, plantation owners spoke of
their happy slaves, blaming Northern agi-
tators for abolition sentiment.
What motivates Eichler, though per-
haps important to his friends and rus con-
science, is generally beside the point.
What is worth noting is how rus approach
functions-who benefits, who loses and
who decides, and why at tills time it
receives such support. We are in a period
of increasingly widespread alienation in
American society, a time of withdrawal
from engagement with centers of power
and, indeed, withdraw-
al from society in gen-
eral. Eichler's is one of
the options for with-
------..--.-: .. ''''.-
LETTERS
drawal from major issues of social and
economic injustice. There are many others.
That corporations which have raped parts
of the country with their profit-maximiza-
tion-at-all-costs policies want to look good
should not surprise us. It is rare for those who
rule to do so solely with an iron fist.
But community organizers continue to
find that patience, a commitment to local
people deciding the destiny of their own
organizations and believable proposals for
action still work. A new generation of
organizers in the labor movement is fmd-
ing the same thing. Like others in these
streams before him, Eichler will only
muddy Perrier waters.
Mike Miller
Executive Director
Organize Training Center
San Francisco, CA
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City Limits invites you to a
luncheon, forum and press conference
For the official launching of the
Cfntfr for an Urban ~ u t u r f
A new public policy institute and City Limits' partner organization
And the announcement of our first policy proposal:
NfiCJhborhood JUsti(f
A (ommunity RfsponSf to Juvfnilf (rimf
A plan to strengthen our neighborhoods, make streets safer
and give young New Yorkers in the criminal justice system tools
to turn their lives around.
C
ity Limits is launching the Center for an Urban Future, an
institute designed to reframe New York's public policy
debate. Mter 20 years of community-based reporting, we
are establishing a partner organization to promote creative
public policy that will strengthen New York's neighbor-
hoods and lead to systemic change. The Center for an Urban Future will
be proactive, crafting affordable and humane proposals based on expe-
rience, not rhetoric.
The Center for an Urban Future (CUF) has chosen juvenile justice for
its first policy proposal, targeting a system in desperate need of reform.
Though adult crime rates have been dropping, there has been little change
in the number of crimes committed by young people. The current juvenile
justice system is a turnstile-70 percent of the juveniles it releases wind
up back in the system within two years. Young offenders too often do not
receive the tools they desperately need to turn their lives around and con-
tribute to a stronger city.
Rather than improve the system, most government leaders have opted
to abandon reform and, instead, shift the burden of juvenile offenders to
the adult correctional system. This extreme measure compromises public
safety. Research clearly indicates that young offenders in adult jails are
damaged in ways that lead them to commit more serious crimes.
With the current debate locked into a counterproductive reliance on
more courts and jails, CUF set out to fmd solutions from the experts-
organizers, government workers, neighborhood youth groups, social ser-
vice practitioners and academics. CUF convened these experts in round-
table sessions and one-on-one interviews, and combined their input with
our own research to develop a reform agenda that works for both neigh-
borhoods and youth.
On January 9th, CUF will release the product of this collaboration:
"Neighborhood Justice: A Community Response to Juvenile Crime," a
comprehensive and affordable plan for reform that places neighbor-
hoods, not government, at the center of the juvenile justice system.
Neighborhood Justice holds offenders accountable and ensures public
safety through community courts for nonviolent offenders, increased
sentencing options for judges, crisis intervention teams that assist vic-
tims at the point of violence, and improved aftercare programs to track
and integrate all juveniles once they are released from correctional facil-
ities. With Neighborhood Justice, CUF will begin to move the policy
debate toward the equitable and cost-saving goals that all New Yorkers
are looking for.
Thursday, January 9th, 1991, 12:00 noon.
At th. UJAlf.d.ration buildinCJ, 130 'ast 59th Str t, Ballroom A.
Spac. is limit.d, so RSVP soon. {all N.iI KI.iman at (212) 925-9820 .

CITY LIMITS
A TEMPEST IN HARLEM
into something more substan-
tial," says Herman Velazquez,
the BRISC's executive director.
The center houses a specialized
library with information on writ-
ing business plans. "Our doors
are open," he says, "and we're
trying to develop credibility with
the community."
not a giveaway program."
Dorothy Pitman Hughes,
the owner of Harlem Office
Supply, also got turned down
by the zone. She questions the
initiative's priorities, though
she concedes she's been
clearing up some tax prob-
lems that may have under-
mined her application. "My
Alvin Johnson, a Harlem
entrepreneur who opened a
Capezio dance clothing store
about a year ago, gets upset
every time he re-reads the
rejection letter he got from
Upper Manhattan Empowerment
Zone officials in October. He
had spent thousands of dollars
revamping his business plan
and preparing an application,
he says, but his request for a
$250,000 loan to turn a vacant
building into a dance studio
went nowhere.
With its first 10 awards
announced several weeks
ago, the government-funded
$250 million Empowerment
Zone backed high-profile pro-
jects involving Robert DeNiro
and Walt Disney and some
small non profits. but did not
directly fund any local small
businesses. Some local mer-
chants are angry.
"Don't tell us there's all this
money and you're going to
empower the community and
then have these people from
outside the community come
and set up shop," says
Johnson.
He has helped reorganize
the 125th Street Merchants
Association in order to work on
getting small businesses
access to zone funding.
"Someone's going to have to be
held accountable," he says.
But zone officials say the
critics should cool their jets.
Roy Swan, the zone's chief
investment officer, points out
that Disney is just one of sever-
al prospective tenants in
Harlem USA, a huge retail com-
plex being built by a communi-
ty- based firm. And he adds that
one of DeNiro's partners in the
restoration of Minton's jazz
club is Melba Wilson, an
African-American music pro-
ducer connected with Sylvia's,
the Harlem landmark restau-
rant. In addition, he says, one
award went to a microenter-
prise program that will make
loans of up to $10,000.
The zone has also set up a
technical assistance sub-
sidiary, the Business Resource
and Investment Service Center
(BRISC), at 271 West 125th
Street, to help small business-
es. The BRISC, which is slated
to have a $500,000 investment
pool for this fiscal year, will
make loans worth $10,000 to
$50,000 and help small busi-
nesses leverage bank funds.
"We're here to help them run
their business in a more sophisti-
cated way so a few years down
the road instead of just surviving
they can develop the business
But not every merchant
should expect help, he
explains. "The business com-
munity has to understand the
process. If you cannot show
the ability to repay this loan,
even though we might want to
do something, we can't. This is
biggest problem is I'm black
and female and I've been left
out of the economic main-
stream of America," she says.
"And the Empowerment Zone
was supposed to help me."
Robin Epstein
BRIEFS
Dorothy Pitman
Hughes is seeking
Empowerment
Zone help to
expand her 125th
Street office
supply store.
KEEPING FAMILIES WHOLE
and services for orphans as
they move to new homes. The
bill would also provide greater
assistance to low-income fami-
lies who take custody of chil-
dren at the request of a dying
parent.
"Are my kids going to be put out
on the street?" She testified
that it is extremely important for
a parent to have the power to
choose whom their children
will live with after they are
gone-without having to worry
about financial and legal con-
sequences.
Almost 30,(0) children have
been orphaned by HIV/AIDS in
New York State-and that num-
ber is likely to more than double in
the next five years, according to
testimony by Or. David Michaels
of CUNY Medical School given
at a public hearing held last
month by Brooklyn Assemblyman
Roger Green, Manhattan
Assemblyman Richard Gottfried,
and City Council Member
Stephen DiBrienza.
Resour(es
SUFFERING FROM POST-WELFARE
reform distress disorder?
Want to do your part to (reate the
DECEMBER 1996
The hearing was part of
Green's effort to move a bill
through the state legislature
addressing the enormous prob-
lem of children orphaned by
AIDS. The Families in Transition
Act would help children of ter-
minally ill parents avoid foster
care by maintaining public
assistance benefits, improving
home care services for ill par-
ents and creating new mentor-
ing and counseling programs
Almost 90 percent of all chil-
dren whose parents die of the
disease are black or Latino, said
Michaels.
"My biggest fear is that I
don't want [my children) to fall
back into foster care," said
Rose Wilford, a mother of five
living with AIDS in Brooklyn.
The bill failed to pass the
Senate last session. As yet it
has no sponsor in the upper
house. We're just shopping for
a senator; said Green's
spokesperson, Sania Metzger.
Kristine Blomgren
jobs that (ash less welfare recipients
will need after they're dumped off the
dole? Okay, sport. Pony up nine
percent of your salary.
In order to provide a mere 30,000
new living-wage jobs-without
displacing anybody-all workers in
New York State would have to give
back nine percent of their salary,
according to a recent report by the
Russell Sage Foundation.
For a copy of "Workfare's Impact on
the New York Gty Labor Market,"
(all (212) 750-6000.
s
PIPEliNE ~
. ,
WEST leaders
includingBruce
James (left) and
Father John
Dufell, march to
West Side
polling sites all
election night.
:M
The Ballot Brigade
A local organizing network is proving that Election Day can be a tool
to put neighborhoods back on the political map. By Robin Epstein
V
oter registration drives have
been a popular backbone of
activist community politics
for years. But until now,
voter turnout has nearly
always been left to candidates' operations
and their supporters.
In an organizing experiment that cul-
minated on Election Day, a network of
New York City community organizations
showed that mobilizing turnout among a
new constituency of voters is a potentially
powerful way to draw attention to long-
ignored neighborhoods.
Eight New York City community
groups, affiliates of the Industrial Areas
Foundation (lAF), the nation's oldest com-
munity organizing network, got 23,000
people in parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn,
Queens and the Bronx to pledge they
would vote, according to David Reischer,
who headed up the project. The groups
hope to get 50,000 voters to the polls for
the mayoral election next year, he says.
The experiments appear to have paid
off. One member group, East Harlem
Partnership for Change, collected 7,000
vote pledges from members, and West
Siders Together (WEST) pulled out about
3,300. The groups used a legion of neigh-
borhood residents to work as "captains,"
ensuring that those who pledged to vote
actually made it to the polls.
For Altagracia Hiraldo, one of
WEST's 75 captains, that meant working
15 hours straight to hold 200 of her fellow
parishioners to their promise to come out
and pull the lever. The evening of Election
Day, she had her hard work affinned by
her pastor, an enthusiastic supporter of
WEST's voter mobilization. Celebrating
mass at the Church of the Ascension on
West 107th Street, Father John Dufell
explained that the Catholic faith demands
more than just attending weekly wor-
ship-it also means becoming involved in
your communi-
ties, working for
social justice.
Hiraldo-
who emigrated
from the Dom-
inican Republic
IS years ago but
only recently
became a citi-
zen-offers a
blunter version
of her pastor's
message: "You
have to demon-
strate your faith
through action,
not just pray,
pray, pray. You
have to do
something for others, for poor people. He
said how important it is to vote, because
we can change our society."
First Foray
This was the local IAF affiliates' fIrst
foray into electoral politics. Yet for years,
the groups have been fostering community
leadership from among their member insti-
tutions, including churches, synagogues,
block associations and other organizations.
WEST, for example, has worked with local
residents on crime, education and trans-
portation issues.
The nonpartisan IAF does not plan to
endorse candidates. Instead, leaders hope
to force politicians of all stripes to pay as
much attention to low- and moderate-
income neighborhoods as they do to the
city's affluent communities-which are,
not coincidentally, known for high voter
turnout rates. This way, IAF organizers
reason, they can shape political agendas
from the get-go.
"Obviously, if a neighborhood is heav-
ily registered or has shown a recent spurt
in voting activity, that would come to the
attention of a candidate," says Manhattan
Borough President Ruth Messinger, who
has all but declared her plans to run for
mayor. ''I'm sure they're going to be a fac-
tor," she adds. "I expect they will have an
impact on who votes and on how they vote
in '97."
The IAF affiliates (which also include
Queens Citizens Organization, South
Bronx Churches, Harlem Initiatives
Together, Brooklyn Interfaith for Action
and Central Brooklyn Churches) used
varying approaches in this year's voter
drive, says Fleischer. In some cases, cap-
tains targeted people in their member
congregations and institutions. In others,
he says, they opted for a geographic
focus, canvassing neighbors who live in
their housing projects or on their block. In
still others, captains talked to everyone
they knew.
WEST captains began by working
their congregations, but a few weeks
prior to Election Day they started going
door to door in their buildings as well,
says lead organizer Vonda Brunsting.
"They could say, 'I know exactly where
you can vote, because I vote in the same
place,'" she explains. And they could
judge their effectiveness by checking
turnout in districts where they had can-
vassed.
In'Kllous Enthusiasm
Bessie Fontenez, a captain in East
Harlem, spent Election Day walking
back and forth between polling places
near Lexington Avenue and I 14th Street,
where she was born 50 years ago and still
lives. She is just one example of IAF's
plan to create a new roster of fIred-up
leaders that will get out the vote year
after year.
Her two foster daughters in tow,
Fontenez enthusiasm was infectious. She
did not let a single individual pass by on
the street without giving them a friendly
reminder-in English, Spanish or both-
to vote.
"Here come some more of my ladies,"
she said as some neighbors approached.
''I'm very happy."
CITY LIMITS
"Todar's battles cannot become fights of Blacks and other nonwhites
against whites. No one will win that fight."
-Julian Bond
/I A provocative and powerful collection of eclectic writings on the central moral issue of
our times .... An arsenal of ammunition for those fighting in the front Iines./1
-Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace
/I Double Exposure delivers a double dose of smart writing, controlled anger, and devastat-
ing common sense./1 -Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Worst Years of Our Lives
POVERTY AND RACE IN AMERICA
Foreword by Bill Bradley
Preface by JuHan Bond
EcUted It)' Cheater IIarbDaJa
1-56324-961-8 He $64.95/1-56324-962-6 PB $19.95
At bookstores .. . or call toll-free
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AMEX. MASTERCARD. VISA
c5"J. E. Sharpe Inc.
1996
s
PIPEliNE
,
Yves Vilus. the
director of the
Erasmus
Neighborhood
Federation. says
he has to do
less tenant
organizing in
order to take the
city's check.
g
Enemies, a Housing Story
The city is paying tenant organizers to cozy up to their sworn
adversaries-landlords. By Glenn Thrush
O
ver a year ago, Barbara
Schliff received notice the
city was once again giving
her
community orgamzatlOn a
contract to continue the tenant support
work it had been doing for years.
When it came time to me a project mis-
sion statement with the city's Department
of Housing Preservation and Development
(HPD), she jotted down a list of some of
the goals Los Sures has long pursued:
organize tenants, try to keep landlords
from neglecting or abandoning neighbor-
hood buildings and help residents fight
unresponsive owners in Housing Court.
But Schliff was in for a surprise.
"We were called into a meeting with
our coordinator at HPD and he told us the
money wasn' t for tenant organizing," says
Schliff. "Basically, he said organizing was
frivolous, unnecessary and a waste of
time .... Instead, they wanted us to help
landlords get loans."
For the first time in more than a
decade, Los Sures was unable to agree to
the city's demands on the project, and
Schliff lost the contract.
Los Sures and other community orga-
nizations that have long held small con-
tracts with HPD are finding that strings
attached to their city checks are yanking
them away from tenant organizing-and
into the relatively uncharted territory of
neighborhood-based landlord assistance.
HPD's new Neighborhood Preservation
Consultant program pays 54 community-
based nonprofits to be the agency's eyes
and ears in low-income neighborhoods.
But as the NPC contractors are begin-
ning a biennial renewal process, many are
claiming the program is poorly run and
foggily conceived-and forces them to
perform functions the agency's central
staff should be doing itself.
"How appropriate is it for HPD to be
asking us to help landlords?" Schliff asks.
"Especially when you go into buildings
and see that so many low-income tenants
aren't getting any services and so many
apartments need repairs."
Speaking before a recent hearing of the
City Council Housing and Buildings
Committee, HPD Commissioner Lilliam
Barrios-Paoli pledged to fine-tune the pro-
gram, but expressed no desire to change the
agency's path. "[The problem is that] some
groups are not comfortable expanding their
roles from tenant organizing," she said.
Landlords at Risk
Former Housing Commissioner
Deborah Wright created the NPC program
in early 1995. Even tenant advocates con-
cede that its predecessor and current sister
program, the Community Consultant
Program, has been poorly monitored and
that some of the contracts went to neigh-
borhood groups closely allied with local
politicians.
"Both of these programs are seriously
flawed in the way they are administered and
implemented," says Anne Pasmanick of the
Community Training and Resource Center,
which has worked with Community
Consultant groups for several years.
At the time, Wright told City Council
members she wanted community groups
to refocus on the initiatives HPD itself had
begun to promote: primarily, providing
greater help to landlords at risk of foreclo-
sure.
Wright's redesign gave each group
slightly more money ($45,000 each a year)
but demanded they fulfill a Dumpster-load
of new functions. These included 25 spe-
cific, labor-intensive tasks, such as devel-
oping a "comprehensive neighborhood
needs assessment," gathering data and
conducting surveys about housing in their
communities, publicizing and helping
landlords apply for subsidized repair
loans, assisting the agency with code
enforcement and landlord counseling,
mediating landlord-tenant disputes and
drafting so-called "voluntary repair agree-
ments" with owners seeking to clear their
record of HPD violations.
HPD administrators were not subtle
about the shift: they established rigorous
quotas for landlord assistance measures and
placed them at the top of the self-evaluation
sheet distributed to each group. Tenant
organizing criteria dropped to the bottom.
"We used to spend a lot of time going
with tenants into Housing Court, but that's
in the past now," says Yves Vilus, director
of the Erasmus Neighborhood Federation,
a nonprofit that serves the predominantly
Caribbean community in F1atbush. "The
other thing we used to do a lot of is tenant
organizing. Now we don' t do that very
much anymore."
The NPC contract, along with another
small HPD contract, make up $68,000 of
Erasmus' $200,000 budget, so Vilus has no
choice but to conform. ''If I lose the money,
I'm out of business," he concedes. He says
he supports the idea of providing assistance
to good landlords, but the new tasks domi-
nate his time and have put him in a difficult
position with some tenants he works with.
After attending a recent building meeting,
Vilus and the landlord remained behind a
few minutes for a private talk. "When I
looked outside, I noticed that all the tenants
were standing out there trying to make sure
I wasn't cutting a deal behind their backs,"
he recalls. "For me it was kind of sad. Most
CITY LIMITS

of the landlords don't trust us and a lot of the
tenants are starting to feel like we've
betrayed them."
Not Much Help
It's not just a question of reorienting
their missions; some community group
directors are also concerned the agency is
not backing them up.
''The groups have been spending a lot
of time trying to contact landlords, but
they' re not getting much help from HPD
when they do get in touch with a land-
lord," says Celia Irvine, an attorney with
the Association for Neighborhood
Housing and Development, a citywide
group that has organized a coalition of
NPCs. In response to the coalition's criti-
cism, HPD has held two recent training
sessions on the city's repair loan program
and on how to execute voluntary repair
agreements with landlords, Irvine says.
The repair agreements are supposed to
be a nonconfrontational tool for getting
landlords to repair chronic building
defects. Yet, while many owners have been
willing to negotiate to facilitate repairs and
clear their records of violations, the NPC
groups don't have any leverage from
HPD- in the form of [Illes or penalties -
to force landlords to stick to the deals.
"Basically, the only thing we can offer
them is a waiver of HPD's $300 inspeftion
fee in exchange for making the repairs,"
says the director of another Brooklyn NPC
group. ''That's our only carrot. If the land-
lord doesn't want to cooperate, what are
we supposed to do? Tell their mommy?"
Even when an NPC manages to hash
out a deal with a landlord, some say city
staffers drag their feet processing paper-
work and dispatching building inspectors
to issue an all-clear on a landlord's slate of
violations.
One of Vii us' landlords filed his volun-
tary repair agreements with HPD three
months ago. He is still waiting for an
inspector to drop by. "We are processing
inspections as soon as we get the informa-
tion," counters Cassandra Vernon, an HPD
spokesperson.
There are other frustrations. As part of
the contract, groups were required to sub-
mit comprehensive reports assessing the
state of their community's housing stock
and proposing various development
efforts. So far none have received any
response to their hard-wrought plans.
Such delays are exposing flaws in an
DECEMBER 1996
agency that some advocates feel is becom-
ing less and less effective at preserving
city housing. Since 1986, the number of
HPD building inspectors has been slashed
from more than 600 to less than 200. And
in recent months, the massive departure of
key staff members--capped off by a 93-
person early-retirement exodus early last
month-has gutted the 100 Gold Street
headquarters of experienced housing
experts.
''It's a total brain-drain," laments one
HPD source. ''It's hard to find somebody
with real housing expertise around here."
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PIPEliNE ~
. ,
Reverend Al
Sharpton has built
aformidable grass-
roots powerbase by
protesting issues
like police brutality,
which many other
black politicians
have ignored.
e-
Blunting Sharpton?
Mainstream African American political leaders are in a bind
if the Reverend Al runs. By Ron Howell
spoiler who will diminish the chances of
liberals with broader-based appeal-and
better prospects of defeating Republican
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Moreover some
~ ~ ~ \ ! . ! elements of the black community
L
ike the beam of light that
turned St. Paul into a
Christian, last year's Million
Man March made sudden con-
verts, too.
At Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist
Church, the day before the march,
Congressman Charles Rangel asserted in
no uncertain terrns that he would neither
show up nor speak at the event. The march
was being organized by Louis Farrakhan,
the controversial black Muslim leader who
in past speeches had baited Jews and once
made a death threat against Rangel's
friend, David Dinkins.
But the next morning came the stun-
ning numbers. Hundreds of thousands of
black men converged on Washington from
the comers of the nation. A light blazed
from above. And Rangel spoke.
"When I saw Charlie Rangel [on the
platform] I almost dropped dead," says
Jacques Degraff, who was at the march
and had been at Abyssinian Church the
day before. Today, Degraff is directing the
soon-to-be-declared mayoral campaign of
the Reverend AI Sharpton, and he is hop-
ing to convert mainstream black politi-
cians to his man's cause.
In fact, Degraff, a former official with
the state Urban Development Corporation
and current vice-president of 100 Black
Men, an influential businessmen's group,
sounds a prophesy of doom for those who
ignore Sharpton's candidacy. "Some polit-
ical figures may no longer be holding their
positions when this is over," he says.
Solid Support
Convincing a broad spectrum of African
American political leaders to support
Sharpton will not be easy. For many,
Sharpton carries as much baggage as
Farrakhan does. He is widely viewed as a
remain concerned about aspects of
Sharpton's past, notably allega-
tions he collaborated with federal
agents in hunting down black fugi-
tive radicals in the early 1980s.
One thing, however, is already
clear. Sharpton, who has shown
startling popularity among black
voters citywide, is going to cause
problems for the likely field of
Democratic candidates, including
borough presidents Fernando
Ferrer and Ruth Messinger,
Comptroller Alan Hevesi and City
Council Member Sal Albanese.
Speaking off the record, a signifi-
cant number of top black elected
officials say they are leaning
toward Hevesi or Messinger. But
Sharpton'S challenge-and their
constituents' response to it-
could make that problematic.
A recent Marist poll shows
Sharpton getting 20.5 percent of
the vote in a one-on-one against
Giuliani, less than the other
Democratic possibles, including
Messinger, Ferrer, Hevesi and
Albanese. But the true signifi-
cance of the figure is that it rep-
resents solid support among the
mass of black voters, a crucial
bloc for Democrats at the citywide level.
A spoiler he may be, but he's an effec-
tive one.
In 1992, Sharpton received an impres-
sive two-thirds of the African American
vote in a four-way Senate primary contest
with Geraldine Ferraro, Liz Holtzman and
Bob Abrams, the last of whom went on to
lose to Republican incumbent AIfonse
D' Amato. Two years later, Sharpton won
roughly 80 percent of the black ballots
cast when he took on Senate Democratic
incumbent Patrick Moynihan. In both
instances, Sharpton surprised analysts by
scoring respectable double-digit figures in
final tallies.
What's more, with his fire-and-brim-
stone preaching style and his flair for
media attention, the minister seems to
have special appeal among the most alien-
ated blacks-those who are eligible to
vote but have not yet registered.
CITY LIMITS
.
~
1
Sharpton claims he can put 100,000
new black names on the election rolls by
the end of January. This may sound like
Reverend Al hyperbole, but Farrakhan was
also accused of exaggerating when he
announced plans to assemble one million
black men.
Add to all this the fact that Sharpton
has been organizing feverishly and has
built strong linkages in the city's black
neighborhoods. He has a horne in the
Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn
(in addition to one in New Jersey) and he
recently moved his National Action
Network offices to Harlem from Brooklyn.
The network holds regular meetings and
buys an hour every weekend on WWRL-
AM radio, owned by Unity Broadcasting,
and its sessions are held at Harlem's
Canaan Baptist Church, whose pastor, the
Rev. Wyatt T. Walker, is one of the nation's
most respected clergymen.
THmH with Sharpton
Walker, once a top aide to the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., is a staunch
Sharpton ally. Sharpton has also drawn the
support of some of the most effective com-
munity organizers in the city, like Charles
Barron, who says he plans to run on a
Sharpton ticket and mount an insurgency
campaign against City Council Member
Priscilla Wooten. And so, unless someone
like State Comptroller Carl McCall sud-
denly throws his hat in the ring, giving
them a black candidate who is "credible,"
black politicians are in a bind.
Observers are wondering, will black
politicians swallow their concerns and back
the reverend with the James Brown hair-do?
There's a possibility that some black
leaders will split their support, publicly
endorsing a mainstream candidate but pri-
vately allowing their streetworkers to cam-
paign for Sharpton. This happened in the
1992 Senate race when a number of local
pols endorsed Elizabeth Holtzman but
then on Election Day, fearing the wrath of
their constituents, passed out palm cards
saying they were teamed with Sharpton.
''This was pretty broadly done," says one
knowledgeable black political analyst.
Sharpton'S critics give good reasons for
avoiding the man. A common complaint is
that Sharpton is a grandstander, unwilling
to run for anything he can really win, like
a City Councilor state legislative seat.
"Sharpton has become the victim of his
own hype," says Chris Owens, president
DECEMBER 1996
of Community School Board 13 in the Fort
Greene section of Brooklyn and son of
Congressman Major Owens.
Moreover, many black officials still
view Sharpton as a loose cannon with an
unpredictable trajectory. Alive in their
memory is the Tawana Brawley imbroglio,
in which Sharpton made allegations, never
proven, that the young black woman from
Wappingers Falls had been raped by white
law enforcement officers.
And he is no more popular with many
black radicals. Some grassroots activists
such as Brooklyn's Sonny Carson still har-
bor suspicions that Sharpton fingered one
of their own. In the early 1980s, Sharpton
allegedly cooperated with the FBI in an
effort to capture Assata Shakur (formerly
Joanne Chesimard), a fugitive black revo-
lutionary convicted of killing a New Jersey
state trooper. The minister has vigorously
denied these charges but they have stuck.
"One of the things we do not believe in are
snitches or anybody ever aligned with the
police in any way," Carson says. "It isn't
easy for the grassroots community to for-
give anybody that's been identified as an
informant."
Sharpton does enjoy good working
relations with several black elected offi-
cials, including Harlem Assemblyman
Keith Wright and Queens Assemblyman
Greg Meeks. Still he does not generally
seek counsel from establishment leaders
and, in this case, seems to have openly
blindsided them. The statewide Council of
Black Elected Democrats met shortly after
Sharpton declared his intentions in
September. His announcement was news
to everyone there. "Sharpton had not dis-
cussed this with any of the elected officials
or religious leaders who were at that meet-
ing," Harlem Councilmember C. Virginia
Fields observed. The group has not yet
taken an official position on his candidacy.
Other black political groups like the
Brooklyn-based Coalition for Community
Empowerment are talking about Sharpton,
but one source says the group is unlikely to
endorse him. A one-and-a-half-year-old
organization of black activists called the
Committee to Elect the Next Black Mayor
of the City of New York will wait awhile
before taking an official position. But
Luther Blake, one of the group's founders,
says "Sharpton might well be the person."
Most of the city's powerful black
politicians are hedging. Rangel , for exam-
ple, praises Sharpton for his consistency
on issues like police brutality and his abil-
ity to "manipulate the media." But he goes
on to say, ''The fact that he got out there
early and announced doesn't mean a damn
thing to me."
Others are almost implacably skeptical.
Says Brooklyn Democratic Congressman
Major Owens, a longtime Sharpton foe:
"There are a lot of things about his past
that have to be explained and cleared up."
Whatever I. Nece ary
Despite the criticism, Sharpton has
been cultivating a more subdued image.
He maintains that the last thing he wants to
do is help usher Republican Mayor
Giuliani to a second term by serving as a
Democratic spoiler. "I have had a long and
hostile history of dealings with Mr.
Giuliani, so I would do whatever would be
necessary to remove him," he says.
He argues he should be supported by
African Americans because no one else is
talking forthrightly about issues such as
police brutality and deficiencies in the
public schools. He says he is virtually
alone in challenging the city's current
political structure, in which few blacks
hold citywide or even borough-wide elec-
tive office. Only Bronx District Attorney
Robert Johnson is black.
''If nothing else, my entering the race
will expose this," Sharpton says. "It is total-
ly unbelievable that out of nineteen citywide
and borough-wide office holders, we have
only one who is black. Who made the deal
that we would be that underrepresented?"
And at the end there might, in fact, be
many established black leaders who take
the position summed up by retired State
Supreme Court Justice Bruce M. Wright.
In 1979, Wright ran one of the most suc-
cessful local black campaigns since the
days of the late Adam Clayton Powell. He
won a judgeship by an impressive margin,
despite vigorous opposition from Mayor
Ed Koch and the powerful Patrolmen's
Benevolent Association.
"I don't think [Sharpton] has a
chance," Wright says. "But I don't think,
as other people do, that voting for him is a
wasted vote .... It enhances black people if
they support him in great numbers.... It
puts up a show of black power, and that is
never a waste." .
Ron Howell, a former reporter for
New York Newsday, teaches writing
at Medgar Evers College.

-e
-
ust beyond the faded fun houses of Coney Island's
Surf Avenue, but not quite past the bad memories,
live Aaron Phillips, his wife Cathy, the kids and
their dolls.
As the Phillips family goes to sleep in their apart-
ment in the Coney Island Houses project, a Barbie
army (Back-to-School Barbie, Polynesian Barbie
and about 100 more) perches pop-eyed on the liv-
ing room shelves, symbols of the vigilance the family needs in order
to thrive in a neighborhood beset with drugs, crime and joblessness.
Until recently, the Phillips family had to live with their eyes
perpetually open, too. But for the moment at least, things have
changed. Three years ago they would have laughed at you for
even suggesting they let their teenage daughters Aja and Desira
walk alone outside at night. Forget about letting them taking the
night classes they said they needed to graduate early from high
school early and get into a good college. Yet this year, Cathy and
Aaron gave the go-ahead: an after-dark ride on the bus into Coney
Island was no longer an insane risk.
"I don' t care much for Giuliani, but he did a remarkable job
getting the hooligans out," says Aaron Phillips. A moment later,
however, his outlook darkens. For all the improvements, he says,
a few gunshots and a couple of bad days and the newfound peace
in the projects will quickly disappear.
In fact, the bad old days are never far from the surface of any
conversation about Coney Island's future.
Over the last two years, the dense cluster of massive public
housing projects that protrude from the narrow Coney Island penin-
sula have suddenly become livable places. But tenants fear that this
progress, like much of the improvements in public housing in New
York City in the past few years, is tenuous, fragile and reversible.
What's going on in Coney Island is a microcosm for what's
happening in housing projects across the city. For the first time
since poor city management, the explosive crack epidemic and
nagging poverty made many of the city's 181,800 units of public
housing virtually uninhabitable during the 1980s, the projects are
on a dramatic upward swing. Moreover, Giuliani has instituted
some of the most significant changes in security and tenant
screening since most of the huge towers were planted in poor
neighborhoods a quarter century ago.
CITVLlMITS
But every piece of good news is linked to some gnawing
uncertainty. No one denies there has been a sharp reduction in vio-
lent crime, but in some parts of even the good projects, drug
bazaars still proliferate and the sound of gunfue is common
enough. And tenant leaders are now saying police brass isn't
doing enough to assure that recent increases in the size of the
NYPD's housing bureau-buoyed by a one-time infusion of fed-
eral cash-are sustained over time.
You won't get an argument in the courtyard of most buildings
if you praise the city's renewal of rigorous screening procedures
to weed out criminals and people chronically late on their rent.
But tenant leaders say the New York City Housing Authority
(NYCHA) hasn't made any effort to fulfill promises to allow real
tenant input on admissions. And many housing experts say the key
to long-term stability of low-income housing is to cede some
meaningful control to tenants.
At the core of all these changes is the city's controversial phi-
losophy that the long-term improvement of the projects depends on
bringing more affluent tenants back to public housing. Not coinci-
dentally, such a policy shift would also boost rent income for the
Housing Authority at a time when the federal govemment has been
slashing public housing operating subsidies. In the process, they are
reversing previous administrations' policy of using NYCHA to
house the city's poorest residents. The Giuliani administration has
applied to the federal government for the right to push wage-earn-
ers to the head of the quarter-million-name NYCHA waiting list, a
plan currently bogged down in the courts.
Still, most tenants sense that big changes are coming. Whether
the changes will keep the nightmare days from coming back,
that's the question.
"At the moment, I like the neighborhood," says Aaron, a
Transit Authority dispatcher with 25 years on the job, who plans
to move to Florida when he retires in the next few years. "But who
knows bow long it will last?"
oney Island's population is overwhelmingly
black, but there were few African-Americans
there before the mid-I950s when the fust devel-
opments, the Gravesend and Coney Island pro-
jects, opened to the neighborhood's white work-
ing class. At that time, most other housing in the
neighborhood, with the exception of a scattering
of small apartment buildings, were disintegrat-
ing summer bungalows converted for year-round use by Eastern
European Jews who colonized shorefront Brooklyn.
When 6-year-old Ronald Stewart moved into Coney in the
mid-' 50s, he was one of the few black people in the neighbor-
hood. "My mother used to do housework for the white people, the
Jewish people who owned houses along Ocean Parkway," recalls
Stewart, who is today the fust-ever black member of the Coney
IslandlBrighton Beach school board. "We moved into a small
apartment in a rooming house .... I'm talking about no bathtub, no
hot water, no steam heat. Just a pot-bellied stove. There were rats
and cold nights."
In the early ' 60s, the Jews and Italians that hadn't already
abandoned the neighborhood for the suburbs began moving into
three huge, state-subsidized, middle-income high-rise complex-
es-Warbasse, Trump Village and Luna Park. The Stewart fami-
ly's home was razed by Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump,
whose management company promised the family fust crack at a
new apartment.
But like many other blacks who tried to apply, Stewart's moth-
er found her way barred by de facto racism based on her low-
income. "The rents, even the subsidized rents, were too expensive
DECEMBER 1996
for us," says Stewart, a parole officer who also runs Coney
Island's only bookstore. "It was a way of keeping us out. And
that's why Trump and Warbasse are almost all white." The
Stewart family took several hundred dollars and moved into one
of the cheap bungalows on the West End, where most of the pub-
lic housing projects currently stand.
Thousands of other black families, forced from other parts of
the city by rising rents and gentrification, followed suit. By the
late '60s almost half of the neighborhood's residents lived below
the poverty line. But within a few years, landlords began neglect-
ing repairs or fled their responsibilities altogether, allowing their
buildings to rot.
Soon, Stewart's mother and other neighborhood activists
began agitating for better housing. The administration of Mayor
John Lindsay pooled its federal money and between 1968 and
1974 dozens of small buildings were razed and an architecturally
jumbled polyglot of residential towers rose, offering clean, mod-
em apartments to more than 3,500 families in a host of new devel-
opments, including Carey Gardens, O' Dwyer Gardens, Surfside
Gardens and three major additions to Coney Island Houses.
But the seeds for failure were sown along with the shrubs and
shade trees that sprung from the courtyards between the high-
rises. First, the largely poor public housing tenants had been seg-
regated from middle-class whites tucked away in their own apart-
ment towers a half mile away. More importantly, there were few
jobs and fewer social services in the neighborhood. And even in
those early years, the majority of families were receiving some
form of public assistance.
Yet the apartments, some of them spacious duplexes with
ocean views, were a welcome haven for people who had been
doubled up in back street wood-frame shacks.
"When we moved in, to us it was a paradise," recalls Audrey
Ross, whose family was one of the fust to move into Carey
Gardens in 1971. "My mother wasn't working, she had six chil-
dren and soon we took in some of my aunt's children, 12 in all.
But we had never lived in any place so nice. I'll never forget the
day we moved in."
n a crisp fall day 25 years later, the seaside
sky above Carey Gardens' four I8-story
buildings retains its cheery, bluest-eye hue.
But inside Unity Tower, one of the dun-
brick piles in Carey, you can slip through an
unlocked back door or walk around front to
watch the kids garnbling in front of the main
door. Two men glug at their soggy-bagged
Colt-45's in broad daylight on the steps.
The lobby is littered with cigarette butts, crushed Coke cans and
balled-up gum wrappers. The elevators smell like urine and the
glass window inside the grim metal lift has been scratched into a
cataracted, opaque blur. The stairwells are dim and echo with the
metallic-sounding shouts of mothers yelling at their children.
"Drugs, prostitution, you name it, we got it," says Thelma
Tucker, who only feels safe in her six-and-a-half room duplex
high above Surf Avenue.
Debra Collins moved in last summer from the quiescent
Sheepshead Bay projects so she could get a larger apartment, but
she wants out already. "I'm not used to living around unclean peo-
ple," she says. "I worry about my two kids riding the elevators by
themselves."
Her concern is justified. This building alone had four felonious
assaults in the year ending last June, more than either the Gravesend
or Surfside projects, which house four times as many people. In
Coney Island's new housing police station, located just across
Crime rates
at Carey
Gardens have
declined
recently. but
tenants say
the number of
cops on the
beat is also
starting to
slide.
-
Mermaid Avenue from Unity, the thumb-tack flags jammed into
strategic maps show that crack, vice and robbery hot-spots cluster
around Carey more densely than any other Coney Island develop-
ment. People living in the three other Carey buildings endured 25
robberies, burglaries and felonious assaults last year.
On this particular November day, two housing patrolmen stand
in front of Carey Gardens, a little more winded than worried. They
have just chased a suspected drug dealer up five flights of stairs.
"We lost him," says the taIler cop, still panting. 'There are three
stairwells in this thing. There are thousands of apartments. A lot
of doors that get slammed shut behind someone. There are one or
two of us. People can just disappear if they want to."
Yet even here, the citywide reduction in violent and drug-relat-
ed crime has been dramatic. Although, housing bureau officials
could not provide specific year-to-year numbers for Carey
Gardens, the major crime index-which includes homicide, rob-
bery and rape-has declined by 12 percent in PSAI , which cov-
ers the project, according to Joseph Leake, the new chief of the
NYPD's housing bureau.
"It used to be like the Wild West," says Norma Scipio. leader
of the Carey Gardens tenants' council. "If someone shoots a gun
out here, you really hear it because it echoes .... But you don't hear
nearly as much of that anymore. There's still drugs, but there are
a lot fewer guns."
"It has cooled down a lot," agrees Hasan Abusabe, a 23-year-
old clerk at the Surf Avenue deli across from Carey. "A few years
ago, I remember there was this guy who shot at these kids because
they had squirted his car with a water gun. He hit a little girl in the
side. One time I remember some guy who was just walking along
the street out here with a shotgun, caIrn, just shooting."
Police brass credit the "zero tolerance" policing strategy of
former Police Commissioner William Bratton, which emphasizes
quality-of-life arrests for public drinking and other minor offens-
es. But they also laud the i8-month-old merger of the once-inde-
pendent housing police force into the NYPD chain of command,
which made housing commanders accountable for crime numbers
in a grueling put-up-or-shut-up process instituted by Bratton.
"Now we have to go down to One Police Plaza and defend
ourselves at these big meetings in front of the top brass," says
PSAI commander Capt. Charles Rubin. "We' re subjected to the
same standard as other cops."
But most importantly, the housing police force grew by 373,
to 2,079 in October 1995, largely the result of an infusion of fed-
eral anti-drug money. "It's allowed us to get more officers out of
patrol cars and onto the beat," Leake says. "In housing, the key
is to have as many cops on foot as you can, walking up and down
the stairways."
But the number of housing cops dropped steeply this year when
some of the federal money ran out. Today the force stands at about
1,880. And the stream of new cops joining the housing division is
diminishing. Before the merger, one in every to recruits attending
the police academy was assigned to the Housing Police. This year,
according to statistics compiled by the City Council, only one out .
of every 17 cadets will go into the housing division.
And if crime in projects around the city is decreasing, it is
falling at a far slower rate than offenses outside ofNYCHA devel-
opments. Overall crime rates in projects dropped by 6.5 percent
last year, compared with a nearly 15 percent drop citywide,
according to NYPD statistics.
"I don't think Bratton's promise that the merger would reduce
crime in the projects to levels comparable with crime outside them
has come true," says City Council Member Anthony Weiner, who
chairs the public housing safety subcommittee.
NYPD officials argue the full benefits of the merger have not
yet been realized. And out in Coney Island, many residents say
that despite the reduction in crime, there still aren't nearly enough
cops on the beat.
"It seems like the police come in here when they feel like it,"
says Merrill Davis, president of the Surfside Gardens tenant asso-
ciation, who says there were two shootings in his building in early
November. "We have a drug problem here that's still horrendous."
"Right now the cops run from site to site, to wherever there's
\
the greatest problem," says Norma Scipio of Carey Gardens.
"That's not bad, but it pulls cops off of other sites and the crimi-
nals notice that and move to where the cops aren't."
Captain Rubin is reluctant to talk about specific deployment
patterns, but he confmns that, in most cases, only one cop is on
post conducting roof-to-basement "vertical patrols" in any given
Coney Island project on any given shift. That's roughly the same
patrol strength as before the merger, he adds.
ut good police work alone is not going to
solve the problems of Carey Gardens.
Conditions in many housing projects deterio-
rated badly during the 1980s. And while there
is debate over the causes, most public hous-
ing experts agree the problems were merely a
concentrated reflection of urban America's
economic meltdown. More poor people
moved into public housing because the private-market, low-
income housing stock had deteriorated badly. Federal programs
for the poor were slashed. Communities hemorrhaged jobs. Guns
proliferated and the violent crack trade exploded.
''There was a greater need for housing among the welfare pop-
ulation," says Phil Thompson, a former high-ranking NYCHA
administrator who now teaches at Barnard College. "The only
large stock of available apartments was in buildings that had been
so poorly managed by the Housing Authority that good tenants
couldn't stand living in them."
All of this, at a time when the Housing Authority had given
up promoting a sense of ownership among tenants.
Although statistics are hard to find, experts say the percentage of
very poor, unemployed families in New York's public housing
increased dramatically, and the already troubled buildings bore the
brunt of the change. "Bad buildings became so concentrated with
very poor troubled tenants, they became totally destabilized," says
Peter Marcuse, an urban planning professor at Columbia University.
Carey Gardens was one of those places. "It was the worst-kept
project [in Coney Island)," says Audrey Ross. "I had a hole in my
wall for three years and one of my toilets was out for two
months .... Anyone who had an alternative would have left."
The current administration has dusted Off NYCHA's long-
neglected tenant screening process, which was relaxed to the point of
nonexistence during the '80s. Now, each prospective tenant faces a
battery of hurdles, including personal interviews, checks with previ-
ous landlords or neighbors and a detailed job history questionnaire.
The housing authority is also running criminal checks on
prospective tenants, rejecting applicants with criminal histories
and excluding the close relatives of tenants whose husbands or
sons have been convicted of drug-dealing. "We're not looking to
rule out people who had one arrest 15 years ago," says NYCHA
spokeswoman Ruth Colon. "We're trying to screen out people
with bad recent rap sheets."
Months before the Clinton administration announced its own
intention to adopt a policy of evicting convicted criminals from
public housing, NYCHA Chairman Ruben Franco had already
gained approval for his own "one-strike" eviction plan. And as a
result of an April court decision, exiction appeals that had normal-
ly taken up to two years are now getting settled within 90 days.
NYCHA has given the boot to the families or friends of accused
felons if they refuse to bar the offender from their apartment. In the
year ending last June, about 1,500 families have been evicted
under the process, according to authority spokesman Hilly Gross.
Yet for all these changes, tenants argue the administration has backed
off its central promise: to include residents in the screening process.
"A couple of years ago I attended a ribbon-cutting to open a
room in my building that was going to house the tenant screening
committee," says Rosia Wyche, the Coney Island Houses tenant
leader. "It's still sitting there. We're not involved at all."
"Giving tenants a real say in how their buildings are adminis-
tered plays a big part in how well the building runs long-term,"
says Susan Saegert, director of CUNY's Housing Environments
Research Group. She has also researched tenant involvement in
East Harlem's public developments. "It gives people a sense of
-
Cathy Phillips.
her husband
Aaron and
their children
finally feel
safe living in
Coney Island
Houses.
--
real control over their lives and a sense of ownership."
At Carey Gardens, the authority has introduced a limited ver-
sion of tenant screening committees, but members of the panel say
they have little real power.
"Most of the ones that we screen are pretty decent people. It's the
ones we don't see I worry about because we don't get to screen
everybody," says Norma Scipio, who sits on the II-member com-
mittee. "We don't have much real power, but I think we help the pe0-
ple who are coming into the building feel more comfortable, feel like
they know somebody. We're sort of like a welcoming committee."
II these changes are only small pieces of the
authority's grand strategy to stabilize projects
and increase revenues by bringing more
working families into developments like
Carey Gardens. In 1995, Franco applied to
HUD for a waiver to allow the authority to
give at least half of t'"le 6,000 to 8,000 apart-
ments that become vacant each year to wage-
earning families making as much as $40,000.
NYCHA received approval of the waiver in June, but the pol-
icy is being challenged in federal court by the Legal Aid Society,
which argues the policy will grant preferences to white applicants
at the expense of blacks and Latinos.
"They are trying to change the fundamental purpose of public
housing in the city," says Scott Rosenberg, Legal Aid's litigation
director. ''They are saying that we will give priority to the least
needy at the expense of the people who most need permanent
shelter. " Rosenberg points to an analysis done by the
Philadelphia-based Center for Forensic Economics, which shows
the new criteria would slash the number of very poor applicants
admitted to public housing by half, while bringing working-class
newcomers up to about 20 percent of the intake pool.
The lawsuit is due to be heard this month, but Colon says it has
halted implementation of NYCHA's plan.
Such "income mixing" is nothing new, however. For years,
NYCHA's three-tiered income formula for admission to projects
has differentiated between middle-income families, working fam-
ilies earning less than $25,000 a year, and families subsisting
entirely on public assistance. The formula, never vigorously
applied by previous administrations, allows NYCHA to take a
third of all new residents from each income group.
In recent years, the poorest applicants have made up about 75
percent of new tenants. In the meantime, NYCHA has been able
to attract only a handful of the most affluent applicants: 6.4 per-
cent of all those who applied for apartments in 1995, according to
authority statistics.
Franco has been working aggressively to boost that number.
Two years ago, NYCHA released a bid solicitation to advertising
flfffis to design a public relations campaign to help "overcome
fears, misunderstandings and other obstacles that inhibit working
families from considering public housing as a viable alternative."
The awarding of this multimillion dollar contract, too, is contin-
gent on the outcome of the Legal Aid lawsuit, authority officials
say.
Norma Scipio and other members of the Carey screening com-
mittee say they are seeing far more applicants who receive SSI
disability payments, an income level that the federal government
classifies as "working class." And housing cops teU stories of
NYCHA agents escorting neatly dressed people through the hall-
ways of the projects. "Carey's big selling point is that it's right
across from the precinct," one officer said.
In addition, Giuliani and Franco are supporting efforts by
Republicans in the House of Representatives to repeal the 1937
federal housing act, which caps rent levels for poor tenants and
limits the number of middle-income tenants that housing authori-
ties can admit in any given year.
"We need [working class] families to restore stability to our
developments," Franco wrote in a letter to GOP Congressmen
Rick Lazio of Long Island last summer. "In a period of decreased
governmental assistance, we need the dollars they bring from their
earnings."
ven as things appear to be getting better, the
public housi ng system is being pulled
between two warring visions: one as housing
of last resort for poor families, the other as
communities buoyed by residents with
money in their pockets and middle-class aspi-
rations. If Coney Island is any indication, the
latter vision is on the ascent.
Perhaps the most visible embodiment of change can be seen
walking along the boardwalk on the West End in small groups,
arms linked. It is the return of white people to the neighborhood's
public housing.
Russian immigrants, many of them forced out of the escalating
private real estate market in nearby Brighton Beach, have been
moving into projects here in a small but steady trickle.
"It's sort of strange, after all these years, to see white faces."
says Aaron Phillips. "Maybe we're going to have to start getting
used to the inevitability of a new problem."
He half-laughs.
"Gentrification."
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PROVOCATIV I;.
DECEMBER 1996
-
-
candal
Secret rrosecution doc ts Jiorfi a year-old bribery
scanda reveal the widespreaa potential for corruption
and manipulation in the city's four Housing Courts.
Reform is still a long way away. By Matthew Goldstein
tate court administrators reappointed Queens Housing Judge Emanuel Haber five years ago to his third
term on New York City's Housin Court, despite allegations that the judge had a history of verbally abus-
ing and mistreating tenants. The deCi ion was controversial, but court officials said the evidence against
aber was inconclusive.
when the 76-year-old judge again sought rea pointment this year to a new five-year term, he found
the tide hacl.turned against him. .
This time, e..Housing Court Advisory Council-a 14-member board that assists court administrators
in reviewing the qua ifications of New York City's 35 housing judges-opposed his reap-
pointment. So did the prestigious Association of the Bar 0 the City of New York.
Tenant advocates had convinced the.. 0 organizations with a mountain of evidence
documenting Haber's persistent rude an confrontational demeano towards tenants
who appear in his court pro se, or without att(lmeys.
Haber realized his bid for a fourth term was in serious jeopardy and embarked
on an all out campaign, enlisting other judges and the landlords' bar to save his
$95,OOO-a-year job. Privately, however, court admim trators were sending Haber a
strong signal that they were not inclined to return . to the bench. And in October,
Haber announced he was retiring. In the end, Haber's experience was similar to that of
veteran Housing Judge Jack Dubinsky, who had also (lome under fire for his alleged
mistreatment of unrepresented tenants. Dubinsky also chose to retire rather than be
forced out by court administrators.
Haber and Dubinsky's failure to win reappointme to new s this year can be
attributed to a turnabout in the Housing Court judicial appointment process. Where once
the reappointment of an incumbent housingjudge w almost a oregone conclusion, court
administrators now appear committed to installing higher-caliber judges on the city's four
Housing Courts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx. To a large measure, the
change is the result of the arrest two years ago of fI r Manhattan Housing Judge Arthur R.
Scott, If. for taking bribes to fix landloro-tenant cases. Scott's arrest and his February 20, 1996,
guilty plea f.Ocked.the.city' ousing Court },stem and served as a wake-up call to court admin-
istrators about festering problems' e of the state's most neglected and beleaguered couJ"!S .
.h e been aseries--o stuttering reform efforts in Housing Court in the months since
Scott's plea. In some small ways, such as the retirements of Haber and Dubinsky, the reforms
have begun to show results. The appointments process is changing and some judges are
being held more accountable for their actions. And the long-static advisory board, responsi-
ble for many aspects of Housing Court oversight, is being thoroughly reconfigured.
"What we're trying to do is put procedures in place that, at least, make sure a Scott sit-
uation never happens again," says Acting Supreme Court Justice Joan B. Carey, who
presided over the grand jury phase of the Scott investigation before becoming the city's
deputy administrative judge earlier this year.
But Carey's reforms have only just begun to reduce the potential for corruption and
malfeasance in Housing Court. Several troubling aspects of the system, many of which
were revealed as gateways for corruption during the Scott case, remain entirely unaddressed.
Secret court documents from the Scott bribery investigation, obtained by this reporter and
made public here for the first time, clearly reveal the brazen nature in which this rogue judge oper-
fated. They also show just how blind court administrators have been to the possibility of wrong-
ci3 doing, and they outline how the troubled court system left the judge and some landlords plenty of
1 room to maneuver for illicit gains. Many of these opportunities remain in place today. Attorneys,
_ for example, are still able to easily manipulate the choice of a judge on any specific case. And a
CITY LIMITS
-
new administrative body established two years ago to review
judges' questionable behavior and order discipline when neces-
sary has reviewed only one case, that of Arthur Scott.
Overall, the city's four Housing Courts remain breeding
grounds for potential abuse. Just two months ago, a Bronx
Housing Court clerical worker was arrested for allegedly demand-
ing that a non-English-speaking tenant pay a $25 "fee" for filing
court papers in response to an eviction proceeding brought by the
tenant's landlord. The court employee, who pocketed the money,
was discovered when the tenant became suspicious and com-
plained. Court officials and prosecutors in the Bronx are still try-
ing to determine whether any other tenants may have fallen vic-
tim to this alleged scam.
A critical phase of the Scott investigation, conducted by
the Manhattan District Attorney's office, was a year-long under-
cover sting during which detectives caught Scott and his main
bagman, Euclid S. Watson, taking bribes on a number of landlord-
tenant cases.
The picture that emerges from the more than
400 pages of previously undisclosed
prosecution court papers is
of a lackluster jurist,
besieged with debts and an
appetite for illegal drugs,
reduced to hustling for pay-
offs ranging from a few hun-
dred bucks to several thou-
sand dollars. Scott even tried
to seduce some of the female
tenants who appeared before
him, while at the same time
taking bribes to evict them
from their homes.
The court records por-
tray Manhattan Housing
Court as a place where the
rules were regularly bent
and broken. Judicial over-
sight was so lax that Scott
and his associates felt free
to exchange bribes in the
courthouse's dingy public
restrooms and crowded
hallways. Watson
apparently had a unique entree to the inner workings of the court-
house, even though he wasn't a lawyer, litigant or court employee.
A self-described "legal consultant," Watson had been a building
manager for a number of landlords before hooking-up with Scott.
A burly, middle-aged man, Watson was not one to adopt a low-key
style. He regularly came to court wearing a large cowboy hat and
plastered with gold jewelry. And he openly bragged to anyone who
would listen about all the judges he allegedly had in his back pock-
et. In plain view of litigants and attorneys, Watson stationed him-
self in Scott's courtroom and awaited cues from his former boss on
whom to hit up for a bribe. On at least one occasion, according to
the court papers, Watson approached Scott while court was in ses-
sion, shook hands with him, and then left the courtroom with the
former judge through a door located behind the bench.
The papers also describe how Watson received favored treat-
ment from a handful of court employees who personally escorted
him around the metal detectors at the public entrances to the cour-
thouse at 111 Centre Street in Manhattan, through which all non-
lawyers and visitors must pass. Court personnel routinely returned
his telephone calls and provided him with information on pending
cases in which he had no apparent connection. In return, Watson
did favors for some of these court employees, such as helping them
get apartments in buildings owned by friendly landlords.
Some court personnel even assisted Watson in getting cases
transferred to Scott from other housing judges-cases in which
bribes were ultimately paid. In one instance, a court employee
approached several undercover agents and inquired whether they
knew where Watson was because the court employee had been
told a case needed "transferring" to Scott.
It is unclear whether the court employees who aided Scott and
Watson were knowingly engaged in criminal activity or simply
guilty of poor judgment. The prosecution court records, obtained
from a confidential source close to the investigation, identify by
name at least a dozen current and former court employees and
housing judges suspected of having some involvement in a broad-
er bribery ring. In the court papers, one of the undercover investi-
gators reports that Watson complained to him about having to
"distribute" bribe money to a lot of different people. The two-and-
a-half year investigation culminated with gUilty pleas by Scott,
Watson, an attorney and three landlords. Scott is currently serving
a two-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half year prison sentence at the
Elmira Correctional Facility in New York.
Yet nearly six months after Scott was sent to prison, some
still wonder why no additional court personnel were ever
charged. Prosecutors say they lacked sufficient evidence to pur-
sue criminal charges against others. For instance, was a court
employee knowingly committing a crime when he walked into
another housing judge's courtroom and, on Scott's instructions,
removed a court file and brought it to Scott? According to the
court papers, the answer is unclear. But one source close to the
investigation says prosecutors ultimately found that a number of
housing judges in Manhattan, out of plain laziness, were more
than willing to "dump" their work and transfer cases to Scott, no
questions asked. Other sources note some potential suspects
may have been scared off in the early days of the probe, when
the courthouse was awash in rumors that Scott was the target of j
a criminal inquiry. ~
Still, the prosecution's own court papers reveal that at one i
point, at least, the district attorney anticipated giving immuni- ~
CITY LI MITS
ty to an unknown number of "reluctant witnesses," including
court personnel.
The city's Housing; Court system has long been a
recipe for scandal. Located in some of the shabbiest judicial facil-
ities in New York, the city's four Housing Courts shoulder one of
the state's heaviest caseloads. In 1995, there were 303,897 new
cases fIled in Housing Court. In Manhattan and Brooklyn, hous-
ing judges sit in small windowless courtrooms. The courts are
always jammed with people, many of them young mothers with
children in strollers. The lines to file court papers are seemingly
endless. "No Smoking" signs posted in courthouse hallways are
blatantly ignored.
On any given day, each of the city's 35 housing judges may
hear and decide as many as 40 eviction or nonpayment of rent
cases, sometimes taking less than 20 minutes to dispense justice.
This chaotic frenzy is compounded by the fact that landlords come
to court armed with an attorney 90 percent of the time, while ten-
ants have lawyers in only 10 percent of all cases. To make matters
worse, most of the cases fIled in Housing Court each year are not
resolved by a judge. Frequently, cases are settled in courthouse
hallways in one-sided negotiating sessions between an unrepre-
sented tenant and attorneys for the landlord. Although housing
judges are supposed to review all settlements, their attention to
them can vary greatly. (See City Limits, April 1994)
Scott Rosenberg, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, says
when it comes to these agreements, known as stipulations, some hollS-
ingjudges do a good job explaining them to tenants but many more do
not. He said there is a "fundamental imbalance of power" when one
party to a negotiation has an attorney and the other does not.
Angelita Anderson, executive director of the City-Wide Task
Force on Housing Court, a tenant advocacy group, says all the
problems in Housing Court are magnified by the disparity in legal
representation between landlords and tenants. "When one side is
so largely unrepresented, their issues cannot come to light," she
says. ''They are vulnerable." She adds that there are simply too
few housing judges to handle the system's crippling caseload.
'''There isn't enough time.' That is the complaint I hear all the
time from judges and court attorneys," Anderson explains.
Even Justice Carey bluntly describes Housing Court as a
"morass" that cries out for a major overhaul. Tenant advocates
argue Housing Court has never fulfilled its original mission to
provide a forum for tenants to force landlords to make necessary
repairs to their apartments. Instead, they say Housing Court is
nothing more than a "collection mill" for landlords and a place
where 22,350 apartment dwellers lost their homes in 1995.
Indeed, if nothing else, landlords and tenants are generally unit-
ed in their antipathy towards Housing Court. But where advocates
see the legal system as stacked against tenants, many landlords
claim Housing Court is a minefield set up to ruin them. The Rent
Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 city property
owners, has a pending federal lawsuit accusing court administra-
tors and judges of discriminating against landlords. To support
their charge, landlords and their attorneys frequently point out that
it can take months, even years, to evict a tenant who has stopped
paying rent. Landlords note that last year, city housing judges
delayed eviction proceedings against tenants 123,112 times.
Despite these differences, a common area of concern to both
landlords and tenant advocates is the court system's failure to
DECEMBER 1996
effectively discipline incompe-
tent, rude or biased housing
judges. Unlike other state judges,
housing judges are not subject to
the oversight of the State
Commission on Judicial Conduct,
the independent board charged
with reviewing the conduct of
state jurists. Indeed, under state
law, housing judges are technical-
ly considered "hearing officers"
A common area of
concern to both
landlords and tenant
advocates is the court
system's failure to
effectively aisc(eline
incompetent, rU(1e or
biased housing judges.
rather than civil court judges. Most court administrators and elect-
ed officials believe the state constitution would have to be amend-
ed to allow the judicial conduct commission to take charge of
investigating complaints against housing judges. Since 1973, it has
been left to court administrators to take this responsibility.
Two years ago, after City Limits published an expose of the
court system's internal procedure for investigating complaints,
court administrators established a permanent seven-member dis-
ciplinary committee to hear charges filed against housing judges
and to recommend possible punishment. Yet since it was estab-
lished, Scott has been the only housing judge called before the
committee. The committee has not even met since October 1995.
To this day, Scott remains the only housing judge ever removed
from office on disciplinary charges. The State Commission on
Judicial Conduct, by contrast, has recommended the ouster of
more than 100 judges since it was established in 1978.
''The committee is an improvement but it is not ideal," says
Alan Beck, an official with the nonprofit Fund For Madern
Courts, an organization that monitors the operation of the city's
courts. "It would be good if there was an independent commis-
sion. In a perfect world, housing judges would be subject to the
Commission on Judicial Conduct."
Michael Coladner, chief counsel for the Office of Court
Administration, counters that the internal disciplinary system is
sufficient. He says complaints are reviewed by a housing judge's
supervising judge and if it is deemed serious enough, the supervi-
sor can fIle formal charges with the seven-member disciplinary
committee. He argues that the court system never intended to give
the disciplinary committee independent power to conduct its own
reviews of complaints.
'The resistance to change in Housing Court is formi-
dable. It is most obvious when simple reforms hit a wall, as has
happened with a proposal to install a computerized system for ran-
domly assigning cases to housing judges. In most other courts,
random assignment of judges is standard practice. But not in
Housing Court.
Currently, cases are assigned every morning by a court clerk
and a civil court judge sitting in a large courtroom known as "Part
18." Housing judges, whose courtrooms are denoted by a letter of
the alphabet, are supposed to be assigned cases in alphabetical
order. If a case is assigned to a judge sitting in ''Part A," the next
case should go to the judge sitting in "Part B" and so on. But an
attorney who pays close attention to the calendar call and the
order in which cases are assigned can manipulate the system
through a variety of procedural techniques. A lawyer, for instance,
can move to discontinue a case if it is assigned to a judge with a
perceived pro-tenant or pro-landlord bias. The action can then be
--
-
re-fued and the process started again by paying another $5 filing
fee. Or, an attorney can try to predict which judge will be assigned
to a case, and ask for an adjournment just before the assignment
is made if the attorney does not want that judge hearing the case.
All these moves are entirely legal. But critics argue that judge-
shopping is pernicious when it occurs in a court where only one side
usually has an attorney and understands how the game is played.
Court administrators began studying the feasibility of
installing random-assignment software more than a year ago, in
response to criticism of the current system that arose during the
Scott investigation.
Yet the plan is stymied, even though it would make it almost
impossible for lawyers to continue to shop for judges in this man-
ner. Publicly, court officials say it is too expensive, noting the
$30,000 price tag of installing the program in all four city
Housing Courts. They say the court system is about to conduct a
comprehensive review of all its computer systems, and therefore
major changes should be put off until a later date. But David
Rosenberg, a real estate attorney and chairman of the Housing
Court Advisory Council, says the decision not to install the com-
puter program is disappointing, and only compounds the Housing
Court's already tarnished image.
"This is a court that has always had a public perception prob-
lem," Rosenberg says, and the new assignment system would help
solve that.
Such reforms always seem to slam up against Housing Court
culture, argues Kenneth Rosenfeld, a tenants' attorney and direc-
tor of the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation's legal
department. He says many housing judges and court employees
are simply overcome with "massive inertia" when it comes to pro-
tecting tenants' right and trying new ideas. Rosenfeld, a tenant
representative on the city's Rent Guidelines Board, says that
because of the large volume of cases in Housing Court, the over-
riding goal for most judges and court personnel is to get through
the day and get rid of as many cases as possible.
"There is this mind set in the court that says, 'You're not going
to get us to change. We're overwhelmed as it is,'" he explains.
At least a few things have improved in recent months.
As a direct consequence of the Scott case, candidates for housing
judgeships must now undergo rigorous background checks before
winning appointment to the bench. For the first time, a state court
investigator is working with the Housing Court Advisory Council
to verify all financial and personal information supplied by judi-
cial candidates as part of the nominating process. The background
checks were prompted by court officials' belated discovery that
Scott had lied on his nominating forms about aspects of his pro-
fessional background, a series of outstanding debts and his own
involvement in a messy landlord-tenant dispute.
Last summer, Justice Carey also established a high-profile
search committee composed of former state appellate judges and
lawyers to recommend new members for the Housing Court
Advisory Council. About half of the volunteer council's mem-
bers will depart at the end of the year under a recently enacted
state law that limits terms to three years. Carey, one of the four
court administrators who has a say in the appointment of hous-
ing judges, explains she hopes to insure that new council mem-
bers reflect a broad cross-section of city residents, including ten-
ants and landlords.
And other changes may be looming, though their value is hotly
debated. Court officials and Mayor Giuliani are trying to rally
political support for a constitutional amendment that would make
housing judges mayoral appointees, just like city criminal and
family court judges. And the Bar Association of the City of New
York is convening a task force to review this and other proposals.
Similar legislation in past years has included a measure to
extend the terms for housing judges to 10 years and bring them
under the oversight of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.
It would effectively make an elected official, rather than court
administrators, accountable for the actions of the city's housing
judges. Marc Bloustein, a legislative lobbyist for the state court
system, says in the next legislative session court administrators
will undoubtedly reintroduce the proposed constitutional amend-
ment. But given history, he is not optimistic about its prospects
this time around. He notes that in the last seven legislative ses-
sions, the proposal has never made it to the hearing phase from
either the Assembly or Senate judiciary committees.
State Assemblyman Scott Stringer, a Manhattan Democrat
from the Upper West Side who heads a recently established
Assembly subcommittee on Housing Court, intends to hold a
series of public hearings on the system in the next few months.
And the Fund for Modern Courts is considering making the city's
Housing Courts one of its next major monitoring projects. If the
Fund does set its sights on Housing Court next year, an official
says they will take a broad look at the operation of all four courts.
In the end, any dramatic reform of the city's Housing Courts
probably will not occur without legislative intervention. Yet,
Scott Rosenberg of the Legal Aid Society observes that as long
as Housing Court is seen as a "poor person's court," it will never
be on top of anyone's legislative agenda. In a similar vein, Bruce
Gould, president of the housing judges' association, says the
city's Housing Courts may never get the funding and the atten-
tion they deserve unless they are elevated to the constitutional
status of the city's civil, criminal and family courts. "We would
do better in terms of allocations if we looked like other members
of the judiciary," Gould says.
A more radical idea advanced by some is scrapping the city's
Housing Court system and merging it back into Civil Court. That
would mean increasing the number of civil court judges or con-
verting existing housing judges into civil court judges. Advocates
argue it would once and for all solve Housing Court's image as a
"step-child court." David Rosenberg, the Housing Court
Advisory Council chairman, says that unless Housing Court
becomes a vital forum for enforcing city and state building code
regulations, there is simply no need to maintain a special court
for nonpayment of rent cases.
Many court observers say that if there was ever a possibility of
change, it is today, with a new administrative justice in charge-
Joan Carey, about to begin her second year-who is actually paying
attention to the Housing Court, unlike many of her predecessors.
For her part, Justice Carey is marginally hopeful. "1 don't like
the situation now," she says. "I don't like the role of the advisory
council and I'd rather see the appointments made by the mayor. I
think many people do not look at it as a true court .... But it's very
hard to change the system." _
Matthew GoLdstein is an attorney and a reporter who has
covered the city's Housing Courts for the past three years.
CITY LIMITS
An urban documentarian pays homage to the TIM-ri
faded dreams of a massive South Bronx ruin. .1;1
W
hen I first encountered the former
Morrisania Hospital two decades ago, soon after the
hospital had closed, the complex was fenced, iso-
lated and beginning to decay. The elegance of the individual edi-
fices and their rational spatial arrangement made them arresting as
ruins. Occupying an entire block west of the Grand Concourse,
the complex as a whole-the hospital plus four ancillary build-
ings-has long been the largest remaining abandoned structure in
the South Bronx and a reminder of failure at the center of an oth-
erwise lively residential neighborhood.
At 11 stories, the former hospital is much higher than the sur-
rounding blocks of tenements. The scale of the buildings is
American, the style European, designed in the 1920s by Charles
Meyers, the city's municipal architect. The huge hospital building
and the ancillary structures were landscaped to make a harmo-
nious, campus-like setting.
Today, the hospital's main building is being rehabilitated as an
apartment house and health, job training and day care facility for
low-income families headed by single women-all part of a $23
million project called Urban Horizons (see sidebar). In the next
few months, the ancillary buildings will be demolished to make
room for a new public elementary school and playground.
I am fascinated by the entropic remains of the golden age of
American cities, the "splendid," "arrogant," "worldly" buildings
meant to herald "the new coming thing" that in the 1920s and
'30s captured the imagination of Erich Mendelsohn, Fritz Lang,
Le Corbusier and many others. To this diverse group of
European intellectuals and artists, these buildings symbolized
America. For myself, I simply want to pay homage to the quali-
ty of their faded dreams.
DECEMBER 1996
Over the years, I have searched through the rooms and walked
around the roofs of the complex, interviewed squatters who have
helped shape the buildings during their decline, and the architects
and planners responsible for their future.
A
t the former Morrisania Hospital,
the yellow brick of the hospital turns golden at sunset,
trees rise from the open courtyard at the center and
arched windows and loggias give the structure the look of an enor-
mous stage set. Since its closing in 1976, the complex had become
an island where people down on their luck, depressed, insane,
addicted or temporarily homeless found asylum.
At first, in the late 1970s, the entrances to the hospital and the
first floor windows were cinderblocked and the perimeter fenced.
But soon sections of the fence were ripped and cinderblocks
removed from the entrances. Squatters moved in.
Many of the squatters I interviewed, beginning in the early
1980s, told me they did odd jobs for local building superinten-
dents and merchants. Some of them described others who occa-
sionally lived in the ruins as predators who mugged neighborhood
people and robbed local stores. Their activities brought in the
police, whose ineffectual searches disrupted everybody's lives.
Scavengers operated freely inside and around the building,
stealing copper, aluminum and bronze. Hundreds of broken fans,
their blue plastic blades scattered on the ground and their hard
bodies cracked like empty shells, attest to the hard work that went
into mining the hospital for copper wire.
For the squatters, this was just a place to live. Some were relat-
ed to each other and shared their possessions. Others were so
wrapped up in their own world that, when addressed, they looked
The mammoth
Morrisania
Hospital will
soon be home to
dozens of low-
income families.
-
Joe Harris had been
living in the Mor-
risania Hospital
ruins for more than
two years. He was
recently pushed out
to make room for
new development
there.
--
away and continued their monologues.
Last year, faced with the beginning of
demolition and rehab work, they did not
seem worried about fi nding another place
to live.
1 met two African Americans, three
Puerto Ricans, a homesick Nigerian and a
Cherokee. Manny, an eight-year resident,
told me he had made over $2,000 selling
scrap metal from the buildings. The center
of Manny's life was his bedroom in the ele-
vator room of one of the structures. His
yard was the roof, bordered by trees that
took root in the concrete. He would wake
up to the air filtering through the trees,
"smelling nice and fresh."
When Joe, one of the squatters, showed
me the complex, he related that he had slept
everywhere, moving from building to build-
ing, floor to floor. He avoided eye contact when I asked questions
about his life. He told me he often followed his grown children on
the streets without being seen by them.
Unlike buildings without squatters, occupied buildings have
clothes, paper, sneakers, mattresses, liquor bottles, crack vials,
lighters and toys strewn throughout. People relieve themselves
anywhere, giving buildings a fecal smell. And people bring in
the rats.
When squatters broke into a construction worker's car early
this year, the entrances to the buildings and the compound were
resealed. But this time the workers made sure the squatters
couldn' t get back in. Pedro is the onJy person still allowed to live
in the complex. He is an older Puerto Rican with a kind face.
As I entered Blood Donors Room 203
mind. In a small room to the side, the floor was covered with
small test tubes. It made me think of the tens of thousands of
bodies that were placed here during the half century the hospital
was in operation.
I
think of the families that will live here
and of the elementary school that will open after the south-
ern half of the block is cleared. It is impossible to tell how
well all of this will hang together.
As I take one last look at the broken fans and their blue blades
strewn on the ground, at the arched windows and the yellow brick
that turns golden, in my mind I see the strange glow coming from
the rusting autopsy table and hear the squeaks of the rats in Blood
Donors Room 203. Here for a short time, I feel again that the
world was eerily enchanted.
Morrisania Hospital was once a large, beautiful complex.
Today it is one of the most powerful ruins in New York City. Soon
it will stop being a separate island and again become an active part
of the city.
It is not being razed, leaving the land vacant. It is not being
replaced by a parking lot. It is not making room for townhouses.
Compared to the fate that befell so many notable buildings of the
period, the former Morrisania Hospital is a success story. One
large and one small building from the complex will be restored,
and the space will be useful again. But three buildings will have
been lost and with them, the campus quality, the harmonious
arrangement of buildings-and their unity of purpose and style .
Camilo Jose Vergara is a photographer and author of "The New
American Ghetto, " published by Rutgers and the forthcoming
"The Passing of the Ruins. "
(in the east wing), a small narrow room with
a couch, I saw rats scampering across the
floor. Then I realized this was Pedro's
home. Peering into the semi-darkness, my
sensations were dominated by the stench
and the sight of so many rats. A blackened
cauldron full of lard by a window explained
the rodents. Entering the room next door, I
found Pedro's bed. Underneath it, rats were
squeaking, claiming it as their room, too.
Yet looking closely I was amazed by a mix-
ture of order and cleanliness. Pedro's bed
had been carefully made. The room had
three neatly arranged sections: a comer with
empty liquor bottles; two rows of foodstuffs
carefully stacked and, by the entrance, a
comer with a broom and cleaning utensils.
A few sticks about a foot in length were
there for hitting the rats. It was so dark that
I was unable to compose my pictures. I pho-
tographed a room invisible to me.
Nancy Biberman stands in the middle of an almost finished apartment,
sawdust covering the floors and the smell of fresh paint filling the air.
"Isn't this absolutely gorgeous?" she exclaims.
In the basement, a sign said "MOR-
TUARY." No trash here. Fear and dark-
ness may have kept squatters away. I
entered a large empty room with a white
metal table and behind it several rows of
clear, empty jars aligned on shelves. My
flashlight was too small to illuminate the
room, but the place seemed bare and the
few objects I could make out stuck in my
The bedrooms are sunny and spacious, the kitchens beautifully dec-
orated. A tragic symbol of urban decline for 20 years, the m ~ e s t i c for-
mer Morrisania Hospital is the site of economic life again.
Biberman created the Women's Housing and Economic Development
Corporation (WHEDCO) in 1991. She began this prqject, called Urban
Horizons, to help low-income women "be good parents without getting
fired" from their jobs. Urban Horizons will not only provide housing and
job training, but also many of the social support services families need
while moving from public assistance to economic independence.
Urban Horizons includes 132 apartments, 48 of which are for home-
less families. In the basement, an employment training program will
teach job-search skills and budgeting. On the ground floor, commercial
kitchens will provide career training in the food service industry and
rent space to aspiring entrepreneurs in the catering business. There
will be a day care center for 72 infants and toddlers, as well as a satel-
lite program of 12 family day care sites. WHEDCO also plans to have a
family support program that provides counseling, physical fitness and disease
prevention services.
WHEDCO's partner is the Institute for Urban Family Health, a nonprofit
organization that will run a training program in primary health care employ-
ment, along with a family practice with three physicians and a 24-hour nurse.
"We want to train people to become economically prosperous so that busi-
nesses will look at this community and find a market here," says Biberman.
Construction on the S23 million prqject, funded by the state and several pri-
vate sources, has been underway for a year. Applications for the apartments,
restricted to low-income families, will be available this month, and all the pro-
grams are scheduled to be operational by March. -Kristine Blomgren
CITY LIMITS
I
n October, a Queens jury found Edwin Smith, a homeless
cocaine addict, guilty of murder in the death of a New
York City firefighter. The prosecution argued that Smith,
who had been squatting in an abandoned apartment
bui lding, was responsible for the firefighter's death
because his makeshift heater had sparked the blaze. For this,
Smith was sentenced last month to a minimum of 17 years to
life in prison, without parole.
At first glance, the sentence may seem just. Smith confessed
to starting the blaze. He had prior convictions for drug posses-
sion and was violating his parole. And he contributed to the
death of a fuefIghter in a city that rightly holds its fuefighters
in high esteem.
Justice In Flames
By Max Block
Max BLock
is assistant
producer of
Radio Nation
and a freeLance
journaList
based in New
York City.
DECEMBER 1996
There is something deeply
wrong with the Smith verdict,
however. Something so wrong, in
fact, that in sending Smith to
prison for a minimum of 17
years, Judge Robert Hanophy
may welJ have extended the
tragedy he was charged with
redressing.
Both the judge and jury
acknowledged that Smith start-
ed the fue by accident. Yet he
was convicted of arson and
felony murder. If this convic-
tion and sentence are allowed
to stand, our justice system
will be pushing a standard by
which desperate, poor and
homeless New Yorkers
devising makeshift means to heat their living
spaces, are risking prosecution for murder.
The tum of events that landed Smith behind bars began on
New Year's Eve one year ago. In the basement of an aban-
doned Queens apartment building, he fasllioned a heater using
an empty fuse box, animal fat and a paper wick. After Smith
and his girlfriend feU asleep, the heater ignited a blanket hung
from the basement wall. The fue quickly spread to the ceiling,
at which point Smith and his girlfriend awoke and fled.
One of the fust firefighters on the scene, Lieutenant John
Clancy, entered the building through the front door, unaware
that the only occupants-Smith, his girlfriend and a third home-
less man-had already escaped. By this point, the fue had so
CITYVIEW
weakened the supports in the basement that Clancy fell through
the floor into the blaze. These are the facts as they were pre-
sented to the jury during Smith's trial.
Within a week, Smith was arrested and the case fell to
Assistant District Attorney Anselmo Alegria. Alegria could
have charged Smith with the lesser crimes of criminal trespass
or reckless endangerment. But he was not in a lenient mood.
Recall that during 1995, there was tremendous pressure on
the fue department and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to put a stop to
a recent string of fuefighter deaths. Clancy's was the ninth death
in a two-year period and the fust of three the fire department
would endure in the fust six weeks of this year. By Pebruary,
when Smith was arraigned, there was a tangible sense that the
fue department had been beset by something not unlike a
curse.
Photos of three dead fuefighters, three grieving fami-
lies and long funeral procession lines were broadcast to
the city. Add to that the frustration of city officials who, in
the face of repeated tragedy, had no ready answers as to
why these fuefighters were dying.
Then there was Mayor Giuliani's personal involvement in
the case. At the time of Smith's arrest, Giuliani was pushing
hard for reform of the parole system, arguing that dangerous
criminals were too often prematurely released from prison.
After City Hall learned Smith was on parole, Giuliani held
Smith up as a primary example of why abolishing parole would
save lives.
With all of that, it's possible Alegria may have been pres-
sured to seek a murder charge against a homeless man for a
death that, by every indication, was a tragic accident. Equally
troubling is the legal precedent that this case may set.
Certainly some would think it is a gain. Richard Brower,
president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, a local
union for New York City fuefighters, maintains that any action
to save the lives of fuefighters is worthwhile. "If it is a prece-
dent, it's a good precedent," he says.
Yet this rush to judgment could doom anyone of us-
anyone who has ever lit a candle, a stovetop or a lantern to
warm a cold apartment-in a city where many landlords fre-
quently fail to provide heat. "If a mother uses the burners on
a stovetop to heat her apartment and she starts a fire, her
actions can be defined as reckless," says Robert Shapiro, a
New York City criminal defense attorney and an expert in
criminal law. If her child is killed in that fire, her actions
could be deemed murder.
This is not a plea to excuse Smith of all culpability. After all,
a firefighter with a sterling record, a wife and a child died while
fighting a blaze that Edwin Smith, albeit accidentally, started.
Smith is responsible. But in sending him to prison for 17 years,
the court is crossing the line between legitimate sentencing and
cruel and unusual punishment.
-
REVIEW
Special Deliveries
By Ariel Gore
"Dubious Conceptions: The Politics
of Teenage Pregnancy, " by Kristin Luker,
Harvard University Press,
1996,283 pages, $24.95.
A
s a former teen mom who
has spent years trying to
convince anyone willing
to listen that my decision
to have a child early in life
did not, in fact, cause the downfall of
American civilization, I'm always on the
lookout for sources of accurate data on
teen childbearing. Kristin Luker's
"Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of
Teenage Pregnancy" is by far the most
refreshing and comprehensive analysis of
that data-and the historical context the
debate grew out of-that I have found.
In this scholarly but highly readable book, Luker, a profes-
sor of sociology and law at the University of California at
Berkeley, manages to debunk just about every American myth
surrounding teen pregnancy and parenthood that politicians
have tried to shove down our throats. Although few of the facts
in Luker's book will surprise anyone who has dared to look
beyond those myths, they are, nonetheless, a pleasure to read.
For example, Luker reports that six out of 10 teen moms
have their first children at age 18 or 19 and that teen pregnancy
rates are actually plummeting. Most teenage mothers, she says,
want their babies and have been raising happy, healthy children
throughout human history. Luker also says that most young
mothers are white, and most of us are poor before we get
"knocked up." In fact, many of us teenage moms are inspired to
do better by our children than we might have done for our-
selves: returning to school after we have kids, refocusing our
lives, and being good mothers in a society that scarcely values
motherwork among the affluent, let alone the poor.
This final point-about the value of motherwork-is my
own. And I'll admit I was a little disappointed that Luker didn't
take the opportunity to explore the greater issue behind most
analyses of teen childbearing: the fact that motherhood, under-
taken at any age, is the most undervalued profession in America.
Luker herself is among those who define teen childbearing
as a "problem," even a "tragedy" (there are very few of us, after
all, who don't think there's anything wrong with it). But she
admits early on in "Dubious Conceptions" that most of the dif-
ficulties teen parents face are indeed socially constructed. She
suggests that poverty, not early child bearing, is the real
American tragedy.
"Having a baby as a teenager does not inevitably lead to
abbreviated schooling and economic hardship," the author
notes. Rather economic hardship and abbreviated schooling
lead to young childbearing. Obviously, young people need
better education, better opportunities, and bet-
ter prospects for their lives in general, which
combined might well have the side effect of
decreasing teen childbearing rates. Luker
fails to stress, however, that it is utterly
ridiculous to believe the goal of reduced teen
pregnancy should be our primary motivation
in making the world a brighter place for
young people.
While the author clearly does not advo-
cate teen pregnancy, she also doesn't do
what many academics on the subject man-
age to do: strip teenage girls and women of
all agency over their own lives. In my case,
having my daughter when I did turned out
to be a smart move. Taking the time to
focus on mothering when I was in college
(l had a her as a high school drop-out, but
went back to school when she was 6 months old) was
not only important for our family, but a heck of a lot more con-
venient than it would have been if I had had a full-time job.
Professors, for example, tend to think spit-up and purple mark-
er in the margins of a paper are cute; I've found bosses aren't
quite so understanding.
Aside from all the tasty statistics I can't wait to use on the
next Republican I talk to, the most interesting part of "Dubious
Conceptions" comes when Luker chronicles the history of
American views on parental "unfitness" and the often mind-
boggling lengths policy makers have gone to in their efforts to
control women's reproductive decisions. One especially bril-
liant chapter, titled "Bastardy, Fitness and the Invention of
Adolescence," describes 20th century attitudes toward single
motherhood, including a 1927 Supreme Court decision that
OK'd forced sterilization for the "feeble-minded." When
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upheld a Virginia state statute
in a case that involved a grandmother, mother and daughter
who were all institutionalized, he declared "three generations
of imbeciles are enough." Or take the 1920 comment by noted
eugenicist Paul Popenoe who wrote that unwed mothers were
of "inferior mentality."
Sadly, Luker predicts that the policy implications of her
work will fallon deaf ears. Still, she offers it up with the same
"almost poignant hope" she says many teens express when we
decide to become parents, when we commit that always opti-
mistic act of growing a child in our womb, of giving birth, and
of mothering in a world we hope, often against all hope, will be
better to our children than it has been to us .
Ariel Gore is the editor and publisher of Hip Mama, an
Oakland, California-based parenting 'zine (800-585-MAMA).
CITY LIMITS
HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE. Asian
Americans for Equality, a 22-year-old CBO, seeks experienced indi-
vidual to help increase affordable housing opportunities.
Responsibilities: direct oversight of housing development projects;
assist in writing funding proposals, analysis of community needs
and potential development sites. Qual ifications: two years or more
experience in urban planning, architecture, construction, finance,
underwriting, real estate or public policy; BA or BS; excellent
oral/written communication skills, computer expertise, ability to
work on several projects simultaneously and independently. Prefer
Spanish or Asian language skills. Cover letter/resume to: Director,
Housing Development, AAFE, 111 Division Street, NYC 10002. AAFE
is an EOE.
MARKETlNG AND OUTREACH COORDINATOR. Market, publicize and sell
services of Lower East Side People's Credit Union to members and
potential members. Bachelor's degree required, preferably in journal-
ism, communications or marketing; or 1-2 years' related experi-
ence/training. Must speak, read, write Spanish. Knowledge of Mac
and Quark Xpress a plus. Salary mid-20s plus benefits. Start imme-
diately. Letter, resume to: Ana Rosenblum, PEOPLES, Inc., 209 East
3rd Street, NYC 10009.
MUTUAL HOUSING EDUCATOR. Develop training materials, conduct train-
ing sessions. Coordinate closely with tenants and staff to ensure
effective democratic functioning of Lower East Side Mutual Housing
Association. Required: High school diploma or equivalent; 1-2 years
related experience/training in working with tenants or organizing; good
writing and communication skills. Bilingual Spanish/English required.
Salary mid-20s plus benefits, commensurate with experience. Start
immediately. Cover letter, resume to: Diane Johnson, It's Time/PEO-
PLES, 139 Henry Street, NYC 10002.
YOUTH CREDIT UNION ORGANIZER. Recruit, register and train young peo-
ple aged 16-17 to form youth program of Lower East Side People's
Federal Credit Union. Coordinate development and implementation.
Required: 1-2 years' experience in training/workshop with youth, pro-
gram implementation and training; good writing and communication
skills. Bilingual Spanish/English helpful. Salary mid-20s plus benefits.
Cover letter, resume to: Diane Johnson, It's Time/PEOPLES, 139
Henry Street, NYC 10002.
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT. Greyston Foundation, Yonkers-based com-
munity development organization providing jobs, housing, day care,
health services, seeks Director of Development. Responsible for
planning and implementing all fundraising programs. Strong skills in
individual/major gifts, special events required. Experience in found,
and corp. solicitations. Must have proven record in NYC area, esp.
Westchester, good writing skills. Salary comm. w/exp. Send resume
and salary history to: Caesar & Washburn, 60 E. 42 St., Suite 1949,
NYC 10165.
Reach 20,000 readers in the nonprofit sector,
government and property management.
ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS
OR SERVICE IN THE CITY LIMITS
PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY!
Call Faith Wiggins at
(212) 925-9820 or (917)-253-3887
DECEMBER 1996
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. Westchester fair housing counseling agency.
Manage a 20-plus staff/volunteers, develop grant proposals, direct
programs, negotiate government contracts, manage $650K budget,
coordinate PR/fundraising. Knowledge of nonprofit management
required. Familiar with housing and civil rights, issues regarding
seniors, minorities and disabled (psychologically/physically) and
Westchester County desired. Excellent staff, board and benefits.
Salary high $40s, negotiable. Resume/cover letter to: M. Buhl,
Westchester Residential Opportunities, Inc. 470 Mamaroneck
Avenue, White Plains, NY 10605. WRO is an EOE. Women, minorities
and persons with disabilities encouraged to apply.
COMMUNITY LOAN OFFICER. To direct lending activities. Manhattan
Neighborhood Renaissance Local Development Corporation seeks
experienced professional in business loan packaging and underwrit-
ing. Ability to work in small office with diverse individuals. Bilingual in
either Spanish/English or Chinese/English a must. Resume to
MNRLDC, 180 Eldridge St. NYC 10002.
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT and PART-TIME COORDINATOR. Working Today, Inc.,
a NFP dedicated to helping NYC employees cope with the changing
economy through services and advocacy, seeks an Executive Assistant
to oversee all administrative duties, and a Part-Time Coordinator to cre-
ate and organize an association of affiliated membership organiza-
tions. Both positions offer competitive salaries with benefits. An
advanced degree in public policy or related field is required for the coor-
dinator position. Mail or fax resumes to: Working Today, Inc., 230 W.
41st Street, #1301, NYC 10036 or fax: (212) 840-6656.
CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP. NYC nonprofit seeks experienced person to
direct corporate sponsorship activities for large, citywide volunteer
effort. Develop sponsorship proposals, present and solicit sponsor-
ships. Entrepreneurial approach, solid experience, and strong corpo-
rate contact base essential. Consultants welcome. Resume and
Project fee to: CCNYC, 305 7th Ave. NYC, 10001.
SPECIAL EVENTS SPECIALIST To run large, citywide volunteer event for
NYC nonprofit. Strong planning, events management, entrepreneurial
and people skills essential. Ability to juggle many activities, strong
attention to detail and boundless energy desired. Dazzle us with your
vision and track record. Consultants welcome. Resume and Project fee
to: CCNYC, 305 7th Ave. NYC, 10001.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR HOUSING DEVELOPMENT Brooklyn-based commu-
nity development organization seeks motivated individual to coordinate
housing development projects. Coordinate predevelopment through rent-
up stages of development; assist Housing Director with acquisition and
financing. Affordable housing development experience and/or education;
well-organized; good computer and communication skills. Resume and
cover letter to: Ass't Housing Director, Rfth Avenue Committee, 141 Rfth
Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217 or fax to (718) 857-4322.
COMPUTER SERVICES
Hardware Sales:
IBM Compatible Computers
Okidata Printers
Lantastic Networks
Software Sales:
NetworkslDatabase
Accounting
Suites/Applications
Services: NetworkIHardwarelSoftware Installation,
Training, Custom Software, Hand Holding
Morris Kornbluth 718-8579157
C ommunity D evelopment Legal A ssistance C enter
a praiect of the Lawyers Alliance for New York, a nonprofit organization
Real Estate, Corporate and Tax Legal Representation to Organizations
Tax Syndications Mutual Housing Associations
Homeless Housing Economic Development
HDFC's Not-for-profit corporations
Community Development Credit Unions and Loan Funds
99 Hudson Street, 14th FI, NYC, 10013 (212) 219-1800
519 Sueet
'Jt1t 11233
(711) 455-1133
"Developing Ideas; Growing Success"
Fundraising Special Needs Housing
Strategic Planning Organizational Development
Computer Training
Kathryn Albritton Development Consultant
IRWIN NESOFF ASSOCIATES
management consulting for non-profits
Providing a lull-range 01 management support services lor
non-pro lit organizations
o Strategic and management develapment plans
o Board and staff development and training
o Program design and implementation 0 Proposal and report writing
o Fund development plans 0 Program evaluation
20 St. Johns Place, Brooklyn, New York 11217 (718) 636-6087
Committed to the development of affordable housing
DELLAPA, LEWIS & PERSEO
150 NASSAU STREET, SUITE 1630
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10038
TEL: 212-732-2700 FAX: 212-732-2773
Low Income housing tax credit syndication. Public and private financing.
HDFCs and nor-for-profit corporations. Condos and co-ops. J-51 Tax
abatement/exemptions. Lending for Historic Properties.
George C. Dellapa Roland]. Lewis Mariann G. Perseo
KCP ENTERPRISES
KEITH C. PRATT
COMPUTER SPECIALIST
E-MAIL: 10360S.3607@COMPUSERVE.COM
COMPUTERS SOFTWARE. PERIPHERALS
DESKTOPS LAPTOPS. PARTS
(212)694-3469 (212)926-5934
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.
217 Broadway, Suite 610
New York, NY 10007
(212) 513-0981
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News Relu.scs & MeJilio. MlIo. ... lIo.'e ... e ... t , ,
to ,ct your ... cssllo.,e Lello.rJ ,
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Ma..rty Sot\t\ct\fcld. Prcsidct\t
Tel. '718) 95&-9'f81 Fa..)l '718) 95&-0901
GIBBONS
COMMUNITY VENTURES

Catherine A. Gibbons
148 Sackett Street, Suite 3
Brooklyn, New York 11231
(718) 625-2538
FAX (718) 875-5631
email: cgibbons@pipeline.com
Community Economic Development Consulting
SPECIALIZING IN REAL ESTATE
J-51 Tax Abatement/Exemption . 421A and 421B
Applications 501 (c) (3) Federal Tax Exemptions All forms
of government-assisted housing including LISC/Enterprise,
Section 202, State Turnkey, and NYC Partnership Homes
KOURAKOS & KOURAKOS
Bronx, NY
(718) 585-3187
Attorneys at Law
New York, NY
(212) 682-8981
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
CITY LIMITS
DECEMBER 1996
mBankers1iust Cotnpany
Community Development Group
A resource for the non-profit
development community

Gary Hattem, Managing Director
Amy Brusiloff, Vice President
280 Park Avenue, 19West
New York, New York 10017
Tel: Fax:
LET US DO A FREE EVALUATION
OF YOUR INSURANCE NEEDS
We have been providing low-cost insurance programs and
quality service for HDFCs, TENANTS, COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
and other NONPROFIT organizations for over 75 years.
We Offer:
SPECIAL BUILDING PACKAGES
FIRE LIABILITY BONDS
DIRECTOR'S & OFFICERS' LlABILTY
GROUP LIFE & HEALTH
"Tailored Payment Plans"
PSFS,INCo
146 West 29th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10001
(2 12) 279-8300 FAX 714-2161 Ask for: Bala Ramanathan
WI
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