City Limits Magazine, January 1983 Issue

Contents
Editorial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3
Opinion
The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove . . .......... ... .... ... . 4
New Chief for a Troubled Agency ............ ...... ...... 5
LeUers ................................................ 6
Short Term Notes
Loose Wreckers in Clinton ............................. 7
Brooklyn Harassment Unresolved ......... ... ...... ..... 8
The Bind on E. (DOth SI. . .. .......... ................ .. 9
Fires and Condos Trouble Flushing ...................... 10
Planning for People vs. Development for Profit ............... 12
An ex-planner's inside tale about the development battle over City
Island.
Greenpoinl's Imperiled Heallh Care . .. ..... . .... ... .. .. .... 16
A city hospital is closed, but the neighborhood' s health problems
remain.
Reagan Welfare Rules Backfire . ..... . . .. .................. 19
How the President's plans for welfare cuts aren't working out
quite the way he planned.
Oetecling the Lead Paint Danger ... .. .................. .... 20
There's just this one outreach program to spot lead paint poison-
ing, and funds to eli mate the hazards are being cuI.
People
Ruth Sjogren of Crown Height s ......................... 22
Tenant Tactics
Code En f orcement .................................... 24
Follow-Up ............. '" .... ... . . ........... ... . ..... 26
Organize!
ACORN Comes to Squat. . ........ ..... ...... .. ........ 27
Review
A Familiar Look Back ...... ...... ............. ...... .. 29
Workshop ............................................. 31
CITY LIMITS/January 1983
2
New Year's Changes
Dear Readers,
In early November, about 25 City Limits con-
tributors got together, at our invitation, to talk about
what the magazine is all about: what we've been doing
right, doing wrong, or not doing at all. After a couple
'0f hours of thrashing it out, some consensus emerged.
The strongest point of agreement involved covering
stories as actively as possible, emphasizing the organiz-
ed community's response to issu'es rather than passively
analyzing housing and neighborhood policy. (It was
also agreed that some policy issues need in-depth
coverage, and we'll continue to provide it.)
The other major agreement dealt with the need for a
format through which news of activism would be readi-
ly accessible to people working for change in their
neighborhoods.
This month's City Limits is the first one in which
we've adopted some of these ideas. This issue, as you'll
readily see, is presented in a format that includes
departments offering information on community
organizing, tenants rights, neighborhood people, the
month' s events and more. The new approach is design-
ed to make it easier for people on the move to find the
information they want and need to read.
This issue of the new, improved City Limits, you'll
also notice, is printed on a higher quality paper stock
than past issues. It will also save us a significant
amount of money - and this reason speaks eloquently
of our tight fiscal situation.
All these changes seem appropriate at the start of a
new year. We hope you'll agree, or, if not, let us know
what you think.
Wishing you and your neighborhood a happy and
productive 1983,
The City Limits Staff
As a Hospital Closes
Page 16
CCITYUMIlS)
Volume VIII Number 1
City Limits is published ten times per year,.
monthly except double issues in June/ July and
August/ September, by the City Limits Com-
munit y Information Service, Inc. , a nonprofit
organization devoted to disseminating infor-
mation concerning neighborhood revitali za-
tion. The publication is sponsored by three
organizations. The sponsors are:
Association of Neighborhood Housing
Developers. Inc. , an association of over two
dozen community-based, nonprofit housing
development groups, developing and ad-
vocating programs for low and moderate in-
come housing and neighborhood stabilization .
Prall Institute Center f or Community and En-
vironmental De velopment , a technical
assistance and advocacy office offering profes-
sional planning and architectural services to
low and moderate income community groups.
The Center also analyzes and monitors govern-
ment policy and performance.
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, a
technical assi stance organization providing
assistance to low income tenant cooperatives in
management and sweat equity rehabilitation.
City Limits welcomes comments and article
contributions. Please include a stamped, self-
addressed envelope for return of manuscripts.
Material in City Limits does not necessarily
renect the opinion of the sponsoring organiza-
tions. Send correspondence to: CITY LIMITS,
424 West 33rd Street , New York, N.Y. lOool
Postmaster send change of address to: City
Limits, 424 W. 33rd St. , New York, NY 10001.
Second-class postage paid
New York, N. Y. 10001
City Limits (ISSN 0199-0330)
Editor . . ...... . ..... ... ..... Tom Robbins
Assistant Editor ....... . . . .. . . Tim Ledwith
Assistant Editor . . ... . ... . .. . Susan Baldwin
Marketing Director .... .. ...... Jim Mendell
Design and Layout. ... . .. . .. . Louis Fulgoni
Copyright 1983. All Rights Reserved.
No portion or portions of this journal may
be reprinted without the express permission
of the publishers.
Insult to Injury at Legal Services
This has been a tough year for delivering legal services to the poor in
New York City. Tenants rely on their local Legal Services attorneys for a
wide range of advocacy assistance in housing, food stamps and SSI
benefits. Since 1971, low income households have had legal access to
the legal representation that was guaranteed by the Constitution but
never paid for by the government. Although funding for these services
has always been tight, the poor could generally find a lawyer when they
needed one.
The Reagan Administration, however, is trying to change all that. The
President not only appointed a board of directors whose members are
hostile to the very existence of Legal Services, he also slashed the
operating budget for the hundreds of offices throughout the country and
threatened to end all appropriations for the program. Legal Services of-
fices, like those in East New York and Williamsburg, are struggling to
avoid laying off attorneys who are already underpaid and overworked. In
those offices such " frills" as law books, periodicals and telephones are
being cut and cost saving steps like using the back sides of copy
machine rejects are worked into office procedures.
Even this sort of belt tightening may not be enough to avoid layoffs of
attorneys and highly trained paralegals which would cripple the ability of
the offices to perform their primary functions.
Against this backdrop, the actions of the President and his appointees
are even more appalling. Faced with rejection of his handpicked board
members by the Senate, Reagan has manipulated the appointment pro-
cess to keep his nominees on as temporary board members for over a
year while they work from within to dismantle Legal Services. Even more
noxious, however, is the latest action by this lame duck board. On
December 15, they hired a new executive director whose contract will in-
clude a year's membership in a private club of his choosing, six month' s
living expenses and a year' s severance pay (should he ever be silly
enough to leave).
This level of arrogance demonstrates a profound insensitivity to the
meaning of the phrase "public trust." It also suggests utter contempt for
the public in general and for the poor in particular.
Cover Photos by: Adam Anik (Peggy Moberg); Keith Boro (Ruth Sjogren);
Laurie Peek (Maxine Golub).
3 CITY LIMITS/January 1983
New York's Iron Fist, and its Velvet Glove
j
At the November meeting of the Board
of Estimate city leaders confronted the
policy of sales and resale prices for city-
owned buildings managed by tenants
and community groups. As reported in
City Limits and elsewhere, the Board
affirmed its earlier pledge to sell apart-
ments at $250 each, however it also
voted, six to five, to impose a city
recqpture of 40 percent of the resale
price on apartments assessed at $2,()()()
or more.
Over 50 people-tenants, politicians,
clergy and others-spelled out in
testimony the reasons why the Board
should support the alternative resolution
of City Council President Carol Bellamy
that would keep resale money within the
tenant cooperatives.
One compelling argument (overlook-
ed by the Board), that the City was us-
ing one logic with developers and
another with low income tenants, was
presented by City Council member from
Manhattan's Fourth District on the
West Side, Ruth W. Messinger. Her
remarks appear below.
I am h e ~ e today, on behalf of myself
and NYPIRG, to urge the Board of
Estimate to support the alternative
(Bellamy) proposal either by according
it nine votes today or by voting for a
lay-over-so that this alternative can be
adopted in two weeks.
First, the Mayor's proposal raised
serious legal questions. I urge you to
consider carefully the legal opinions we
have circulated. I agree with their con-
clusions that there are legal prohibitions
against the adoption of a plan that pro-
vides for 40 percent of all future resales
to accrue to the City. I believe the tak-
ing of this money constitutes a tax, in
which case it may not be imposed at the
discretion of the Board of Estimate but
must be adopted in the State legislature
and ratified by the City Council.
Whether or not this is adjudged to be
a tax, it is certainly money to be taken
by the City which would otherwise go to
the individual Article XI housing cor-
porations. But these corporations are
charged by law with using all of their
monies for low and moderate income
housing, so one has good reason to
question the legality of requiring that
they surrender a substantial portion of
such money to the City for its general
revenues.
Second, I hope you have listened, and
listened well to these tenants. They have
testified eloquently to the situation in
their buildings-as they found it origin-
ally, as they have worked on it over
time, and as it continues today. Even
where these tenants are living in neigh-
borhoods whose land value has appreci-
ated, they are living in buildings that are
in bad repair. It is the people before you
today -in their multi-racial, multi-
ethnic, many-neighborhooded splen-
dor-who have kept their buildings
viable, who have made the stabilization
and increase in land values in their com-
munities possible. Do not penalize them
for this contribution; reward them. Do
not adopt a shelter policy, a one-shot
action which keeps the roofs over their
heads, but undermines the future of
their neighborhoods toward which they
have been building. Adopt, instead, a
housing policy which uses the resources
they have provided to help us all meet
the desperate long-term need in this city
for low and moderate income housing.
Third, and most important, do not
4
enact today an official double standard,
demanding recapture of profits from
poor people even as other branches of
this same government deny the possibil-
ity of recapture of profits from those
who are better off. This City subsidizes
as a matter of policy, luxury residential
and commercial development. It pro-
vides generous tax benefits to individual
buildings and explicitly rejects any re-
capture of windfall profits on these
buildings when they are sold for huge
owner gain, even when they realize pro-
fits greater than those projected to the
City.
The City has, in fact, argued against
recapture of any profits in its tax benefit
program. As Deputy Mayor Karen
Gerard said last year to the City Coun-
cil, when we supported recapture, and I
quote:
"It is recognized that some indi-
vidual firms may earn unexpected
profits from these programs, but
the assumption is that achieving the
goal of stimulating investment is
more important than monitoring
(individual) earnings.
"Part of City 'windfall' is recap-
tured through the higher property
values generated.
"My instinct is that this (recap-
ture) cannot be done well ... Devel-
opers should be rewarded for tak-
ing risks and their profits should
not be fully recaptured if their risk-
taking pays off."
Apparently the City recognized the
'risk' taken by a large profitable cor-
poration that builds a new headquarters
but not the risk taken by a low-income
family that assumes responsibilty for an
apartment and a building that needs
ongoing capital investment to cure it of
major building violations. In fact what
the City would do, un,der the Mayor's
proposal, is to use an iron fist with low
income tenants and a velvet glove with
the rich. That must not be.
I would urge you, then, for reasons
of legality, equity and justice not to go
along with this plan. O
New Chief for 'Troubled'State Housing Agency By Michael McKee
T
HE FIRST CABINET-LEVEL AP-
pointment of the incoming Cuomo
administration was of Yvonne Scruggs-
Leftwich as Commissioner of the state
Division of Housing and Community
Renewal. She replaces Richard A. Ber-
man. Currently regional director of the
DHCR Buffalo office, Scruggs-Leftwich
was a deputy assistant secretary for
community planning and development in
the Carter Administration's department
of Housing and Urban Development.
In announcing the appointment
December 9 at an Albany press con-
ference, Governor-elect Mario Cuomo let
drop that he was considering moving
DHCR's administrative offices from
Manhattan to Albany. This comment
caused immediate tremors on the 58th
through 60th floors of 2 World Trade
Center, where toil 450 of the agency's 480
employees.
Scruggs-Leftwich takes over an agency
which has been "troubled," to use
government parlance, for the past decade
or more. Translated, this means that most
people in state government consider
DHCR to be a mess. The "line agency"
among New York's numerous housing
and community development entities,
DHCR has continued to lose clout within
state government since Nelson Rocke-
feller's creation of the Urban Develop-
ment Corporation in the late sixties and
the shifting of developmental resources
from DHCR to UDC. DHCR has
become more and more a caretaker agen-
cy, stuck with administering a myriad of
regulatory programs and powerless to
control the sexier programs of the new
housing construction and production that
have been assigned to its rival agencies.
The Carey administration made several
unsuccessful stabs at shoring up the agen-
cy, appointing a series of commissioners,
all of whom were supposed to crack the
whip and none of whom lasted very long:
John Heimann, who left to become U.S.
Comptroller of the Currency in 1977; Vic-
tor Marrero, who left for a deputy
secretary post at HUD in 1979; and Ber-
man, who took over in January, 1981.
Counting Lee Goodwin, a Rockefeller
appointee held over by Carey at the begin-
ning of his administration, DHCR has
had four commissioners in the past six
years and several periods of stewardship
by an acting commissioner during the in-
tervals between appointments.
Commissioner Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich.
In 1980, Carey floated plans to disman-
tle the agency, but backed off when faced
with legislative opposition. In.stead, he
appointed a "council" and charged it
with coordinating housing policy (what
housing policy?) among DHCR,
SONYMA, HFA, UDC, Department of
State and various other agencies. The
council itself was dismantled last year.
Similar discussions of restructuring
DHCR are taking place now among
Cuomo's people.
While it lost its development and pro-
duction capacity, DHCR in 1977 gained
the Neighborhood Preservation Com-
panies program, and then in 1980 the
companion Rural Preservation Com-
panies program. Consistently faiHng to
use these important programs in ways
that could have put the agency back on
the map, DHCR' s administration of
them has been inadequate and, addition-
ally, increasingly fraught with abuse.
While the overwhelming majority of non-
profit community groups funded under
5
these programs are worthy organizations,
a number of bogus NPCs have gotten into
the program, based not on merit but on
connections to politicians. DHCR staff
refer to these groups as "wired."
While the funding of such groups took
place to a limited degree before Berman
took over in 1981, the problem has ac-
celerated rapidly under his tenure as he
has passed out numerous grants in order
to curry favor with legislators. Some
groups have also been funded, over
DHCR staff objections, by order of
Carey's Division of the Budget, in a pro-
cess which has circumvented the applica-
tion and evaluation procedure within
DHCR.
The mis-administration of the NPC
program by the Carey administration has
placed a cloud over its future. Many of
the most effective NPCs (referred to as
"stars" by DHCR staff) are now being
defunded because they have reached the
e $300,000 limit imposed on grants to any
5 one NPC. The state Senate, unsympathe-
tic in any case to a program that funds
low-income groups in urban areas
-many of them black or Hispanic-has
refused to pass a bill to raise or eliminate
the cap, pointing to the increasing num-
ber of "political" groups in the program.
How the Governor-elect and his new
housing commissioner will deal with this
problem is a matter of considerable con-
jecture among legislators and other
observors. Scruggs-Leftwich brings im-
pressive credentials to her post. Her
resume is 16 pages long, including more
than six pages of publications and profes-
sional papers. She holds a master's degree
in public administration from the Univer-
sity of Minnesota, has taught at Howard
University in Washington, D.C. and the
State University College at Buffalo and is
married to Edward Leftwich, former
regional director of the DHCR Albany
office, who is currently staff director for
Buffalo Assemblyman Arthur Eve. They
have four children.
Only time will tell whether Scruggs-
Leftwich fares better in the state post than
have her many predecessors. O
Stirring Distrust on the Lower East Side
To the Editor:
City Limits' December issue provided its usually thoughtful
and interesting analysis of many New York City community
issues. I was troubled, however, by your coverage of the Lower
East Side.
Community Board #3 responsibly approved the City's Ar-
tist Housing Plan because for the first time in many years it
would mean the development of middle income housing in an
area that has become the most heavily concentrated low-
income community in the City. More than 14,000 units of low-
income housing exist on the Lower East Side, mostly Housing
Authority projects that will remain and therefore will not
"gentrify." What is important is that the Lower East Side be
permitted to develop-commercially and residentially-to en-
sure a restoration of its tax base as is potentially viable in the
borough of Manhattan.
I recognize that this development should not take place en-
tirely without restriction. At the same time, though, it is in the
interest of the people who live in the Housing Authority pro-
jects for the area to be developed. Commerical development,
middle income housing and yes, even market-rate housing
would provide jobs for the thousands of unemployed poor on
the Lower East Side. The increased revenues the City would
realize as a result of this kind of development would also en-
sure that programs for the poor and needy would not necessar-
ily have to be scrapped and that some basic essential services
would have to finally come to the Lower East Side. All the peo-
ple of the Lower East Side believe that our mass transporta-
tion, police protection and education need improvement.
These issues, coupled with a comprehensive and fair plan for
William Rapfogel is incorrect in stating that we have ac-
cepted "extremist " charges and have made the artists'
housing vote into "them versus us." The vote tally from the
community board demonstrates the continuing disparity
between representation and political power on the Lower
East Side and as such, displays the stark ethnic lines of
demarcation.
The board vote was 25-13-1. Of the 25 in favor, 21 were
while, 2 Asian, one black and one Hispanic. Also, of those
25 pro-artists' housing votes, 14 came from residents of the
Mitchel{-Lama cooperatives along Grand Street, which
themselyes are 97 percent white. The sole Hispanic voter for
the project also lives in those co-ops, part of the three per-
cent who have managed to gain entrance. The black vote
came from an employee of the Educational Alliance who
does not live in the board area.
The vote was also indicative of how poorly the board
6
the revitalization of the area are our priorities.
Your acceptance of the charges made by a group of ex-
tremists does no good to the cause of responsible debate; it
only incites hatred and breeds contempt. "The organized
Jewish community" is fortunate to have voting with it many
non-Jews and several non-organized people at the Community
Board. Your attempt to make this a "them versus us" issue is
unfortunate, untrue and frankly, irresponsible. The insinua-
tion that the Boys Club, and its respected director Andrew
Korothy, engaged in some deal with the City in return for his
vote is ludicrous. On page 9 of the very same issue of City
Limits you mention that Pueblo Nuevo had its groundbreak-
ing recently. Two of Pueblo Nuevo's planning directors sit on
Community Board #3 and have voted on issues that directly af-
fect their agency. Mr. Korothy's vote on Artist Housing was
one that only impacts his agency through the gradual improve-
ment of the area.
The Lower East Side is a very special community. Its ethnic
mix and, in general, the overall cooperation between the peo-
ple of different heritages, color and background has been ex-
cellent. There are those who would destroy positive efforts in
our community to enhance their own positions. It is time for
their demagoguery to be rejected. There is an old Hasidic say-
ing: "Let us be like the lines that lead to the center of a circle
- uniting there, and not like parallel lines, which never join."
That is the challenge on the Lower East Side.
William E. Rapfogel, President
South Manhattan Development Corporation
itself reflects the community's population. As a whole, the
area is 46 percent Hispanic and black, 30 percent white, and
23 percent Asian. Yet the 50-member board representing
these residents is today 72 percent white, 18 percent
Hispanic and black and six percent Asian.
White residents of the Grand Street co-ops alone account
for 32 percent of the board's members.
There was debate among many others over the artists
housing issue and there were I I votes in addition to the 14
from the co-ops in favor of the plan. But among the
Hispanic and black community - barely represented in
proportion to their numbers - there was overwhelming op-
position to a project that seemed to flaunt their economic
and political disenfranchisement .
Part of the Lower East Side challenge is to accurately
describe it . o Editor
A Loose Wrecking Ball in Clinton
T
HE HOMES OF SOME 50 TEN-
ants living on West 42nd Street near
Tenth Avenue just barely escaped the
wrecking ball in early November.
Armed with a demolition permit later
said to have been issued in error, a wreck-
ing crew arNved at 6 AM on Saturday
morning, November 6, and proceeded to
demolish two empty buildings at 559 and
561 Tenth Avenue. A third building, 557,
is still standing although it suffered five
gaping holes. Investigators of the incident
said the crew would have proceeded to
"knock down the whole corner," inclu-
ding an occupied building at 506 West
42nd Street, had not tenants summoned
aid.
Nancy Kyriacou, a tenant organizer
with the nonprofit Housing Conservation
Coordinators, who has worked with
tenants of the buildings for some years,
was able to reach Housing Commissioner
Anthony Gliedman at his home who, in
turn, ordered the city's Building Depart-
ment to stop the demolition.
The buildings are within the special
Clinton district and are subject to restric-
tions on demolition. No permits for raz-
ing buildings are to be issued without the
approvul of the housing commissioner
who must certify that no harassment has
taken place on the site. har-
assment charges are outstanding against
owners and managers of the buildings.
The buildings have been shuffled back
and forth for several years between a
group of owners, some of whom have
been convicted for arson.
Still listed as title owner of the buildings
is Joseph Bald who has been convicted of
arson in Queens and Brooklyn. The pro-
perties were redeemed in Bald's name
from the city for back taxes amounting to
$500,000 in November, 1979, after a pro-
tracted battle in State Supreme Court and
several hearings at the Board of Estimate.
Although Bald's current interest in the
buildings is not known, a few days after
the redemption the mortgages were turn-
ed over to a 10th Avenue Development
Corporation, headed by developer Henry
Roth. Roth is currently developing a
The hole where Tenth Avenue dwellings once stood.
federally subsidized Section 8 rehabilita-
tion project in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
ensuing harassment and have managed to
establish a functioning tenant association
in 506 West 42nd St.
Harassment charges against Roth's
management group and an earlier
manager, Ralph Sperling, are still pen-
ding. Sperling was indicted along with
Bald in 1980 for arson and fined $5,000
last October. Tenants said Sperling at-
tempted to vacate the building by setting
numerous fires and vandalizing its
systems.
The Building Department's deputy In-
spector General, John Lewis, said that
the demolition permit was issued in error
but that an investigation was underway to
determine what had happened. "At this
point in time," said Lewis, "there is no
reason to believe it was anything but a
mistake."
The buildings were constructed in 1900
and designed by a prominent architect,
Ernest Flagg. Flagg, along with Jacob
Riis, advocated improved housing for the
working poor. The buildings were in
disrepair for many years and little interest
shown in them until the Hell's Kitchen
area appreciated into valuable real estate.
Two years ago, local realtors said the
prices bandied about for the buildings
ranged from $275,000 with tenants in
place to $3 million or more vacant.
Tenants of the remaining occupied
building on the corner have withstood the
parade of owners and receivers and the
7
Oliver Grbec, who heads the associa-
tion, said 47 apartments in the building
are occupied and all but two are paying
rent. Two adjoining buildings are almost
empty.
"We have three-year leases, a locked
front door and intercom, appliances,
even a laundry room," said Grbec.
"Things have really turned around here."
But, he said, "We still can't relax, par-
ticularly after what happened. We're not
fools. We know they're out there and
would like us out so they could make a
killing on the land." OS.B.
New Director
For Bronx Group
The Banana Kelly Community Im-
provement Association in the South
Bronx has hired Getz Obstfeld as its new
executive director. Obstfe1d, 28, was
director of a neighborhood based group
in Providence, Rhode Island for 3 liz
years, before serving as a Revson Fellow
at Columbia University. Banana Kelly
has homesteaded several buildings and
vacant lots in its area and is active in hous-
ing management in the South Bronx. D
Brooklyn Harassment is Still Unresolved
Rabbi David Fischer, left and, Yisroel Rosenfeld, right.
I
N DECEMBER 1981, CITY LIMITS
detailed the pattern of tenant harass-
ment and displacement, fueled by govern-
ment funding, that has torn apart the
Crown Heights section of Brooklyn for
over five years. At the time, a number of
official sanctions had gone either ignored
or unimposed. Lucrative federally-subsi-
dized renovations had brushed aside both
findings of racial discrimination and of
harassment. The division between the
Hasidic Lubavitcher community which
sponsored the housing projects, and the
largely black population where com-
plaints originated, was a dangerous gulf
of suspicion and violent distrust.
A year later, the picture is little chang-
ed. Tenant organizing efforts, in at least
one instance, blocked one rehab plan. But
punishment for those offenses officially
confirmed has yet to be doled out and
confronting the phenomenon appears to
have even less political appeal than
before.
This is the story today.
A plan to use loan guarantees from the
federal Small Business Administration to
subsidize the displacement of remaining
tenants at an apartment building at 1365
Carroll Street and for its transformation
into a hotel was blocked by community
opposition. The building, owned by Rab-
bi David Fischer, director of Chevra, the
Hasidic community's housing manager,
has been sold and is now in the hands of a
receiver. Plans for the hotel have shifted
to an abandoned building on Crown
Street.
Findings of harassment by the city's
Bureau of Rent Control against Chevra,
Fischer and Joseph Blizinsky for their
role in displacing tenants of 440 Brooklyn
Avenue and 1577 Carroll Street to make
way for federal Section 8 rehabilitation
are under appeal, as are over $40,000 in
fines levied against them. According to
the Bureau of Rent Control ' s chief
counsel, Harry Michelson, the appeals
are currently not on the court calendar,
although he expects them to be reinstated.
Also, three-and-one-half years after it
was begun, an investigation by the city's
Department of Investigation into charges
originally levelled by City Council Presi-
dent Carol Bellamy, remains unreleased.
Bellamy' s charges in 1978 that Chevra
had misused federal CET A and other
funds, sparked numerous probes, all of
which faded away. Last year DOl at-
torney Bruce Fogerty told City Limits the
report was onl y "two weeks away" from
release. Over a year later, Gordon
8
Haesloop of the same agency
acknowledged that the report had "little
priority" but will be out "quite soon."
An agreement w o r k e ~ out between
HPD and Fischer that allowed the
renovation of those buildings to continue,
despite the harassment findings, was .
finally implemented last March, over a
year late. The deal called for Fischer to
bow out of the management of the
buildings and for the establishment of a
fund created from the profits made from
the rehabilitation. This fund would be
used to pay HPD fines and tenant claims
against the owners for harassment.
Although almost $100,000 in the form of
a $40,000 letter of credit and cash has
been deposited in the fund, nothing has
been paid yet to recompense those tenants
Director Must Resign
The director of the Crown Heights
Jewish Community Council, who was
elected Democratic Party District
Leader in November, has been ordered
by the state Division of Housing and
Community Renewal to resign one of
his two positions or lose state funding.
Under state regulations, board
members and paid staff of groups
receIvIng funds under the
Neighborhood Preservation Program
are barred from holding elective
political office. The Community
Council has a $35,000 grant under the
program.
According to DHCR. spokesman
Mark Bodden, Rabbi Yisroel
Rosenfeld was told verbally shortly
after his election that he would have to
resign from the Council if he was to
serve as District Leader. Rosenfeld,
whose narrow election victory is still
being challenged in court by opponent
Sylvester Leaks, has not complied as
yet, said Bodden, and his group could
lose further state funds. Bodden said
the regulation was designed to prevent
the politicization of the funding pro-
cess. D T.R.
who were driven out.
Meanwhile, the Crown Heights Jewish
Community Council overcame substan-
tial federal questions over its procedures
to rent out the Section 8 subsidized apart-
Caught
in a Bind on
EastlOOth
Street
By Sharon McDonnell and Tom Robbins
O
N A FIRE-SCARRED, VANDAL-
ridden block on East lOOth Street in
East Harlem that police call the "worst"
block in the 23rd Precinct, a group of low
income families have gotten caught in a
bind that catches an increasing number of
the poor each year. Rejected by public
housing managers for a variety of
reasons, and too impoverished to afford
decent housing on the private market,
they are threatened with falling off the
social ladder entirely. That is if they can
continue to evade the arson, crime and
drugs that surround them.
The buildings are among a total of 17
properties on East lOOth, 102nd and
103rd Streets between First and Second
Avenues that were foreclosed upon by the
federal department of Housing and Ur-
ban Development and then sold to the
New York Housing Authority and
targeted for a substantial rehab program.
Rehabilitation is at least two years
away, however, and in the interim, the
NYCHA has been charged with manag-
ing the buildings and relocating tenants.
Some have gone to other public housing
projects and others, at least pending their
return when the buildings are fixed up, to
private dwellings. But others have found
no other shelter and still look to the Hous-
ing Authority as the manager of their
buildings.
Managing the buildings as is, however,
is an almost impossible task. The
ments in its Union Street Gardens com-
plex. Despite discrimination complaints
pending against the group for other rehab
projects, the HUD Regional office gave
the group the go-ahead to rent up the pro-
ject. Complaints about the project's ren-
ting have been ftled with the City'S Com-
mission on Human Rights and in Federal
court by Bedford Stuyvesant Legal Ser-
vices.D T.R.
"Some of them have been moved three
or four times within one year," said
Noemi Perez Hicks, executive director of
Metro North.
But a Housing Authority spokesman
responded, "What other choice do they
have if they're on a floor where somebody
set fire to other apartments and we can't
secure the building?"
There are at least seven families re-
maining in 322 East 1000h Street, all of
whom have been found ineligible ' for
public housing for a variety of reasons.
While the Authority offers sympathy, it is
adamant they must relocate themselves.
Delores Ford has moved with her two
children from 306 East 1000h to 314, to
318 and now to 322. She was consolidated
with other tenants out of the first two
buildings and burned out of the third. She
can't get into public housing as a priority
relocatee because the father of her
children is serving a prison sentence for
murder.
Another tenant, Omelia Rodriguez,
~ has lived on the block for thirty years, but
li: also can't get into the projects. She does
E receive a rental assistance payment but
~ can't find a place to use it.
John Archie, a tenant oj 314 East 100 Street.
buildings have been plagued by suspic-
ious fires, including one last Labor Day
weekend that left four tenants hospital-
ized. Open apartments have been prey to
junkies who have ripped out plumbing
and other fixtures, sending tenants to
hydrants outside for water. Hallways
have become shooting galleries.
A local nonprofit group that does
neighborhood preservation work, the
Metro North Association, has become the
advocate for those tenants who remain
and are caught with nowhere to go. They
have harsh words for the way in which the
Housing Authority has dealt with
residents.
9
Sandra Warneke, a community
organizer for Metro North, charged that
the Housing Authority had abandoned
the tenants when it shifted its on-site
relocation office to East l24th Street.
The number of families living on East
IOOth Street has dropped from 29 when
the Labor Day nre emptied 318 East lOOth
Street. No one is quite sure where those
families have gone. While the Housing
Authority insists that it "has no problem
keeping track of people we've relocated,"
and will return once the rehab is done, the
same can't be said for those who have no
promise of an eventual rehabilitated
apartment, and are fending for
themselves. 0
A
FTER A THIRD SUSPICIOUS
fire struck the same single
blockfront of small shops along Main
Street in Flushing, Queens,that had been
ravaged by two earlier arson blazes,
neighbors began to sound the alarm.
What they found themselves facing, in
addition to seven gutted businesses and
nine more stores with extensive fire
damage, was a development plan that
would rise from the ashes and replace the
service and goods shops along the com-
mercial strip with a 15-story con-
dominium tower.
Local consternation was joined by
suspicion when it was learned that the
same would-be condo developer had
sought, before the fires, to buyout the
longterm commercial leases held by the
merchants. That suspicion hardened
when two other facts were added: a $4
million bid by the developer for the pro-
perty before the fires was upped to $5
million,after the blazes caused a clause
cancelling those leases to be invoked; and
while the owner of the property, the
Green Point Savings Bank, said the land
was not for sale to the merchants,who had
also inquired before the fire about its
availability, the higher bid by developer
Thomas Huang's Asian Plaza Corp, was
accepted.
Fires and Condos
Trouble Flushing
Finally, as many residents of the 41st
Road and Sanford Avenue area began to
publicly link the fires with the develop-
ment scheme, a feeling of helplessness
was added as some politicians, bankers
and even law enforcement officials in-
sisted there was nothing they could do to
block or alter the project as planned.
A $20 million tower with 86 duplex
condo apartments, starting at sales prices
of $150,000, would rise over Main Street
as a private, "as of right" development,
residents were told. At a meeting in
December, neighborhood tenants and
homeowners sought a means to block the
development-or at least slow it down-
while they found answers to their many
questions. Instead, they found themselves
discussing unfamiliar zoning laws and
what they do and do not permit.
Private Property
While city-owned property must travel
what is now a fairly well-worn path
through the multiple citizen review phases
of ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review
Procedure) that precede final city action,
private land, being used for private devel-
opment fmanced by private funds, has
none of the obvious handles for local
leverage. Even where that private devel-
opment would have as public an impact
as the proposed Asian Plaza condomin-
iums, it remains essentially a private
business transaction.
10
Only where a developer needs some
public lattitude to accomplish his plan,
such as a variance from the height or den-
sity regulations for the site, is the public
review process brought back into play.
Even then, the opposing community can
only try to penalize the project by denying
the waiver being sought, not thwart it en-
tirely.
Flushing residents who have raised the
issue of the development have formed an
ad hoc coalition, Concerned Flushing
Residents. The group has sought to
pressure the bank, Green Point Savings,
to scotch the sale. Indeed, bank chairman
I.J. Lasurdo publicly offered to give
developer Huang back his money and
says he wishes he'd never heard of the
Asian Plaza Corp. for the "black eye"
the publicity has given the bank.
But the bank is building a $4.5 million
addition to its offices next door to the site
and Lasurdo also says the condo project
will be a major boon to the community.
Since closing on the sale is not until next
April, local folk have loudly suggested
there is plenty of room for Green Point to
back out if it wished.
Merchants Look to Return
Ironically, the community may get its
chance for review, but many opponents
may have to pull their punches if it does.
Once the local newspaper printed what
had only been whispered along Main
Street about Huang, the fires and his con-
dos, the developer began negotiating with
the recipients of the widest sympathy, the
fire-damaged small merchants.
The merchants have sought the
reinstatement of their leases and the
reconstruction of those burned-out and
now demolished. They also forthrightly
added a demand that there be no future
fires. Such an agreement appeared close
in early December, however, a premature
press conference called by state Senator
Gary Ackerman who hosted some meet-
ings between Huang and the store owners
announcing an agreement that didn't yet
exist set things back. The announcement
did reveal, though, that in return for ac-
the merchants in his devel-
opment, Huang sought to extract their
backing for a zoning variance to add two
more floors to his condo tower.
Thus, opponents of the project, who
have said more than once they would
back the merchants in whatever they
sought to do, could find themselves at
hearings on the variance going one way,
while the small businesspeople who have
suffered the most from the arson, go the
other.
While the outcome of those talks is
awaited, the Concerned Flushing Res-
idents group is working with the citywide
Neighborhood Anti-Arson Center to help
it research those and other fires, and it
may have found another edge on the pro-
ject through Huang' s planned 300-car
parking garage which could require an en-
vironmental impact statement.
As they seek a beefed-up investigation
into the arson cases, there remains a good
deal of frustration among the project's
opponents. They are certain in the know-
ledge that multi-million dollar real estate
deals in this town, like Asian Plaza, rest
on more than land-use regulations to see
them through. Between the plan and the
erection of Asian Plaza lie a myriad of ci-
ty permits, from demolition and crane
usage to sidewalk curb cuts for the gar-
age. Were there a political will to hold up
the project, little could move on the site.
Meanwhile, with Flushing's Main
Street strung up with Christmas lights for
the holidays, it resembles that vision of
smalltown America that Jimmy Stewart's
trusting loans helped build in "It' s A
Wonderful Life. " The prospect of a $20
million condominium complex looming
above it seems as unlikely as it would out
of place. But would Jimmy Stewart's
Savings and Loan Association have
financed a I5-story condo on that Main
Street too? DT.R.
1l!!
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11
CITY LlMITS/January1983
- - - ---------Development------------
Planning
F or People
vs. Developntent for Profit
By Peggy Moberg
An Ex-Planner's Inside Tale of the Battle Over City Island
A
YEAR AGO, IN JANUARY, 1982, NEW YORK
City's planning commission fired me. I had been a
city planner for eight years. But when I wrote an honest
report opposing a zoning change sought by both developers
and planning officials, the bureaucratic heavens opened and
wrath stormed down. The administration demoted me, stop-
ped paying me, fired me, and blocked my unemployment.
Nevertheless, my side won in the end.
This is the tale of that fight. The fight is about the city's
economic planning-planning which could cost you your
job the way it cost me mine.
*****
The immediate conflict broke out on August 3,1981, a
day as hot and sticky as nervous sweat. I received a two-
page, single-spaced memorandum from the planning depart-
ment administration. I ran scared to my office mates, and
three of us read the memo together.
The administration called me "insubordinate" on twelve
counts. But it wasn't the charges themselves so much as the
tone of fury that made my hands clammy. Sentences started
emphatically with ", You . . . you appeared, you continued,
you advocated, you behaved, you informed. " I took the
thing home, almost wishing it were alive so I could knock
out its teeth.
CITY LIMITS/January 1983 12
I sat up til dawn, reading and writing out my own
memorandum in defense. Stripped of their anger, the ad-
ministration's accusations were thin: My two worst crimes
were "leaking" a draft of my economic report on the
boatyards in City Island and opposing proposed zoning
changes for the island against the' 'unified department posi-
tion. "
To whom had I leaked? I'd given copies to the Mayor's
office and to the subjects of the study. What was my op-
position? I said at an executive session of the Planning
Commission that the changes would hurt the boatyards and
only help condominium developers.
The memo ordered me off all City Island projects im-
mediately and onto clearing "backlog" agency reviews. I
was to be silenced, punished, and converted into a paper-
pusher.
All night I wrote protesting my innocence. Then, still
tense, I jogged in the morning shadows, and the truth hit
me. I was guilty of everything. I had done what the ad-
ministration charged. But that was my job. Suddenly, the
bureaucracy's anger hardened me. The slaves in my family-
tree started to kick. The old-time slaves had had to keep
their mouths shut. But today I-like many of us-earn a
living through my words. By shutting me up, the agency
,.
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would roll be back to Antebellum days. I wasn't going
quietly.
For 16 months I had been preparing a study on City
Island's marinas, sailmakers and related nautical businesses.
City Island is an isolated strip of the Bronx jutting into
Long Island Sound. It is one of a kind in the city. Its marine
businesses are irreplacable. The planning commission
wanted to know if the boatyards were still viable or whether
zoning changes should be made to ease development for
waterfront luxury condos. I polled the marine businesses
and found most were viable and wanted to stay.
I sent my draft report to the marinas themselves for cor-
rections. Their local business chamber gave a lunch to
discuss it. I went. That was not insubordinate. Getting feed-
back was routine to making a final report.
I opposed the zoning change because giving my views in-
side the planning department's meetings came with my job
on City Island. But the Bronx planning commissioner, Ted
Teah-law partner to Roy Cohn and Bronx Democratic
boss Stanley Friedman-wanted the changes. I had irked a
political heavy.
The Chase
That morning, I went to see my union, Local 375 of the
Civil Service Technical Guild for planners, architects, and
engineers. Union vice president Brad Smith and president
Lou Albano were reform mavericks who had just ousted the
old porkchop leadership-including a convicted embezzler. I
figured I'd trust them if they talked straight. The air-
conditioning only half-worked in Smith's tiny, dark office.
Smith, a robust fellow planner, knew the people behind my
papers. He made a joke and we laughed and I cried a little.
The room became even more crowded when Smith lit a cigar
and Albano called in the union's lawyers.
A lanky, bearded young man hustled into the room. Jules
Lobel was a marathon runner and a lawyer on retainer from
Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman-the
law firm that defended Pentagon whistle blower Daniel
Ellsberg. Lobel squeezed in Laura Fieber beside him. Fieber
was the union's chief counsel and an expert on grievance
procedures.
We all talked. I gave them my line about the job of a
planner being to present different sides for uses of real estate
in an economy like City Island's. Some developers,though,
didn't like my supporting marinas. That was the problem.
The union people said dandy, we wouldn't go into local
politics. We'd fight this saying I was doing my job and I
deserved free speech and a hearing before I could be punish-
ed.
The memory of the five of us packed together in Smith's
office under the busted air-conditioning and smoke-all of
us trying to make sense of planning, real estate deals, and
angry bureaucrats in the dog-days-sustained me through
the chase ahead.
The chase was vicious and raced for nine months before
we stopped the administration's vendetta. Within a week of
my seeing the union, city planning officials demoted me and
cut my pay. In September, they stopped paying me
altogether and sent inspectors general-the police of the civil
service-to investigate me. In October they suspended me.
After Christmas they fired me, blocked my unemployment
compensation, and tried to stop my hearings. Not once in
the nine-month fight would the bureaucrats negotiate with
my union or talk with me. It would take petitions from
staff, a publicity campaign, coverage in The New York
Times and elsewhere, plus pickets and arbitration to
ultimately win a settlement of $10,000 in backpay, all
charges dropped against me, my name cleared and my firing
rescinded. I then resigned. I had decided this sort of govern-
ment wasn't for me.
Early in the chase I decided to fight the zoning changes in
public. In the Fall of 1981 I testified at both the hearings of
the City Planning Commission and of the Board of
Estimate. In a way the joke is on the City: I wasn't a full-
fledged whistle blower nor did plans for City Island concern
many people, until the memorandum in August roused me
to go public. I knew when I supported the marinas and
. questioned the zoning, even from inside the planning depart-
ment, I was taking some risk. Partly, I miscalculated how
much, and partly I went ahead anyway. Two things moved
me. First, my own interests coincided with the planning
issues, and second, the internal condition of the bureaucracy
made me mistrustful.
Planning by Politics
The fiscal crisis bred a management crisis inside the city
planning department. For years directors rose and fell like
tenpins. The agency was probably no different from other
agencies where budgets shriveled, but at city planning alone
the budget dropped nearly 50 percent-from $14 million to
under $8 million in three years from 1976 to 1979. As a way
of "getting by" the administration tried management
overhauls-a cheaper solution. .
In the period during which the City Island study
ran-roughly the sixteen months before August, 1981-the
department had two chairmen, three executive directors, and
two of my immediate directors for the economics division.
That is a new boss every six to eight months. Throughout
this whirligig of executive bodies I learned to be a seasoned
independent.
I also saw that the whirligig system served political in-
dulgences. Too many chiefs turning over meant it was
harder to mind the store. To some extent, we had almost an
absentee bureaucratic management, and its weakness gave
wheeler-dealers room to move. For example, some city plan-
ners feel closer to some of the biggest real estate lawyers in
town than their own bosses. These lawyers have been put-
ting deals through the planning department for longer than
most middle management have worked there. I grew tired
of seeing this government set-up indulge developers and
evict and displace jobs for real estate deals. On City Island,
the small marine network with its jobs told me they wanted
to stay and not sell to condos. Preserving those jobs became
both my planning and my personal interest.
13
The Planners and the Amusement Park
The fiscal crisis has sheltered carloads of deals for special
developers. I want to tell you about one example, one of the
colorful ones which I thought of often while I worked on
Condominiums under development on City Island.
City Island.
The deal was the Staten Island theme park. You may
remember it. The City promoted the project all through
1975, Year One of the fiscal crisis. The idea was to put an
amusement park on 100 acres of publicly owned industrial
land in Staten Island. The City would lease the site for 99
years at 7< a square foot to the amusement developer.
Opposition was enormous. In the community, people had
homes across the street. Inside the planning department op-
position also bubbled. I was assigned to do the department's
economic review of the developer's plan. The giveaway
price plus a list of unanswered financing, economic, and
other questions were an inside scandal among planning staff
for more than a year while we studied the deal.
Then; in July, 1976, Andrew Stein-then a state
assemblyman-charged that the park was an influence-
peddling scam. The developers , he said, had contributed to
the mayor's campaign. The state opened an investigation,
and by October the planning department's administration
was ripping labels off my files, tearing up memos, and tell-
ing me to send- certain papers to the corporation counsel.
The project died.
But none of the staff who had raised questions were
punished. How politically polarized the bureaucracy has
become since 1975 is shown through City Island's case. By
1981, the bureaucracy wanted a staff who processed deci-
sions. Period. There was something else about the theme
park that cut into me and that recurred on City Island: the
theme park had been considered for ten prime city-owned
industrial tracts and was given over a year's worth of staff
labor at the public's expense. Behind the fiscal crisis, the ad-
ministration was scrapping the manufacturing and produc-
tion base of the economy for fast, private bucks. On City
Island a similar story unfolded.
Boatyards vs. Condos
In December, 1979, the planning commission approved a
tax-abated, Section 8 residential project on a boatyard site
which had been acquired by a developer. This move
departed from a planning commission decision just three
years before, to designate City Island a "special district"
with boatyards and the small-town residential community to
be "preserved." One commissioner, Vice Chairman Martin
Gallent, dissented on the 1979 conversion. He wrote: "This
act will be a signal that the balance of the boat-related in-
dustry will no longer be protected by our zoning and that
the housing developers who .. . pay the best price for the
land will totally usurp this area. The jobs and the industry
will disappear in quick succession."
Nine months later, in August of 1980, the commission ap-
proved a zoning change to allow the boatyard owned by the
wife of a mob lawyer to convert to luxury condos. This was
the commission's second departure from the special district.
A year after that, in the Fall of 1981, Teah, the Bronx
planning commissioner, asked for and got a blanket change
to the zoning around the shoreline. The change specified the
building rights any future landfill would have. I opposed
this as serving those most likely to want land-
fills-developers. At the time, a private real estate prospec-
tus was also circulating the island, proposing to increase the
island's acreage by one-third with landfill on which would
be built hote)s, apartments, and other commercial deals on
current marina sites.
The hearing on the zoning change at the Board of
Estimate dramatized the city's hard line: the City Island
Chamber of Commerce-to which the marinas and the
island's main businesses belong-opposed the zoning. An
officer gave letters to the Board saying that at the chamber's
last meeting everyone had voted against the zoning except
one real estate developer. The mayor's man on the Board of
Estimate then challenged the right of some City Islanders to
testify, saying that he had heard them before at an earlier
meeting. Then, the board voted-all "ayes" except City
Council President Bellamy's representative who dissented.
The City Island plan proceeded apace. In October ,1982,
the planning commission junked even lip service to its own
designation of City Island as a "Special District" preserving
a nautical community. Instead,the commission opposed the
expansion of one of the island's leading marine businesses.
For years a large and growing local diving company had
asked to buy the decaying schoolhouse adjacent. In 1982 the
commission jumped to give a long-term lease to a communi-
ty group with leaders close to the Bronx Machine.
Wrote the again-dissenting Vice-Chairman Gallent, "The
commission's position ... is mere sophistry .... " I agree.
But this sophistry covers the systematic flow of deals and in-
dulgences which evict jobs and production, and as City
Island shows, do so in white working- and middle-class com-
munities as well as in slums.
I know, too, from the chase of the whistieblower's life
that I led for nine months that I didn't win my clear name
and cash because I was "right." I won because I had the
stronger side. There were my union, the staffs of city plann-
ing and other government agencies, and New Yorkers from
the public together. That is the other bottom line. To plan
our economy in any reasonable way, we'll have to fight to
run our government, for it is either fight or be evicted for
most of us.
Who dares to plan? 0
Peggy Moberg is now a journalist working with Local 375
and the Connecticut Advocate newspapers. She says: 'For
anyone tangling with City Hall-including some insiders
whom / admire-/ hope my story helps for the next round.
The tale is also my way of thanking New Yorkers and the
staffs of the municipal agencies-especially at city plann-
ing- who made the happy ending to this episode possible. "
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- -------- --Health Care----------
GreeDpoint's ImperUed Health Care
Storm fence around the closed Greenpoint Hospital.
By Susan Baldwin
G
REENPOINT, AND THE SURROUNDING NORTH
Brooklyn community never boasted an overabundance
of the latest health care facilities. But with the closing in late
October, 1982, of the 67-year-old "obsolete" Greenpoint
Hospital to make way for the city's self-proclaimed white
elephant, the $311 million Woodhull Hospital, the community
finds itself facing a health care crisis.
In response to the closing, community residents recently were
brought together by a local nonprofit, housing rehabilitation
group, the St. Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation Corpora-
tion, and have formed a task force to save the old Greenpoint
site.
"The initiative to save the vacated buildings came out of
fear that they might be torched," said Gary Hattem, executive
director of St. Nick's and one of the organizers of the task
force. "HHC was being real quiet about their plans for this
site, but what has become increasingly apparent is what we're
in the middle of is a health care disaster. We must act now. A
lot was lost with this closing, and now people are not using the
newly opened [satellite] facility because they got out of the
habit. This whole part of Brooklyn is in desperate shape."
Greenpoint Hospital's former catchment area covers a
largely low income population of about 750,000. Until it was
disbanded with the hospital's closing, the Greenpoint Hospital
Community Board, elected by the neighboring community,
had advocated a scheme for phasing-out the hospital and
replacing it with a modern, well-equipped neighborhood fami-
ly care center and three smaller satellite centers to be placed in
Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Bushwick. These facilities
were deemed adequate to meet the immediate community
health care needs and ultimately would be linked into the
operation of the proposed Woodhull facility. Somewhere dur-
ing the 15 years it took to get Woodhull built and open, the city
discarded those plans.
So despite its support for the municipal facility at
Woodhull, the Greenpoint community board felt compelled to
go into State Supreme court last March seeking an injunction
against the closing of Greenpoint and opening of Woodhull.
The board charged that the city's Health and Hospitals Cor-
poration-the superagency manager of the municipal hospitals
-had violated its state-ordered mandate in bypassing con-
~ sultations with the board for planning and programming
~ Greenpoint 's closing. A contempt of court citation brought by
5 the board against HHC is still pending in state court before
g: Justice William T. Bellard.
8
v

'" ..J

16
Most Expensive Hospital
At nearly four times its projected original cost, Woodhull
Medical and Mental Health Center officially opened
November 4 on Flushing Avenue several miles from Green-
point in the eastern part of Williamsburg. The humorless
ribbon-cutting ceremony was punctuated by caustic one-liners
from Mayor Koch.
"There's something wrong when a hospital budgeted for
around $100 million by the state's Facility Development Cor-
poration (the builder) ends up costing the public three times
that much," the mayor asserted, adding, "There's something
wrong when the Health and Hospitals Corporation has to
spend more than $14 million repairing and reconstructing parts
of this hospital before it could be opened."
According to hospital figures, the estimated cost of keeping
Woodhull closed had risen to $20 million a year, making it im-
perative that the city find a way to put it to use. Originally
budgeted for $85 million, construction costs for Woodhull in
1970 were estimated at $167, 235,000, and now the total cost to
the city will be mor:e than $440 million, making it the nation's
most expensive municipal hospital.
Community health advocates watched in alarm as
Woodhull's steadily rising costs drained this vast catchment
area of other essential health services.
"Green point has nothing now, not even any decent
medicaid mills to take care of the people. There is no real
medical care left, " said Herbert Loadholdt, a retired furrier
and senior citizen advocate who formerly was chairman of the
Greenpoint board. "HHC has been doing exactly whatever
they wanted without any consultation with our board,"
Loadholdt asserted. " They don't care about serving the people
who used to come here to the hospital, and the only reason why
we were able to get them to put this inadequate, ridiculous
satellite facility at the old hospital site is because we're in
court," he added. He noted that the clinic could disappear
once the court case is over. It is receiving light use, and its ex-
istence has not been publicized.
Formerly a 146-bed facility, Greenpoint had an active
emergency room and provided substantial ambulatory out-
patient clinic care that served the local population's preventive
health care needs.
Defusing the Boards
According to another community board member, Bernice
Campbell, two of the group's main goals are to make HHC
more accountable to the communities it serves and force its
adherence to its own mandates as spelled out under the New
York City Health and Hospitals Corporation Act.
"Health care is the issue here, and more specifically, how it
is going to be provided to the poor in New York City," Camp-
bell said.
"It was all right until the community people on the [ad-
visory] boards started asking questions and taking their jobs
seriously," Campbell, a former laboratory technician at
Greenpoint explained . . "Once they wanted to have a say, to
help plan the community' s future and pointed out the pro-
blems in the system, that's when the trouble started."
Added board member, Herbert Tibbs, " When we began to
become effective, the corporation realized that a mistake had
been made and began to dilute our powers."
A social worker at Greenpoint for 15 years, Tibbs said that
when first conceived, as part of the elected board's duties, it
had to concur with the administrator in the selection of an ex-
ecutive director for the hospital they served. At Woodhull ,
I ..
however, no board was even appointed (they are no longer
elected) until after the director and other chief positions were
already filled and just before the hospital doors opened. Now
boards are handpicked by the hospital director and the local
borough president.
The boards, Tibbs pointed out, once were instrumental in
developing the hospital budgets or in making any program
changes. These duties, too, he said, have disappeared, leaving
them stripped of any significant power.
A Rougb Transition
Greenpoint was the only hospital for miles in this northern
part of Brooklyn where there are not even private hospitals
- close by. The area has the largest geriatric population in the city
and is increasingly becoming home for a steadily growing
Hispanic enclave. These factors as well as the inadequate
public transportation routes to Woodhull are major reasons
why, 'community planners maintain, there is such a great need
for a substantial family care network, not just a "band-aid"
satellite facility, in this area.
17
Also, according to Susan Rowley, the attorney at Bedford
Stuyvesant Legal Services who is handling the community
board's lawsuit, high fee schedules under the private profes-
sional corporation providing medical coverage and staff are
prohibitively expensive for clients without private medical
coverage.
A major concern of the Greenpoint community board was
the slow startup at Woodhull. Currently the new facility has
only 94 beds active, plus 15 bassinetes. This number is 50 fewer
than were available at Greenpoint. Thomas D. Ricke, a
spokesman for HHC, said Woodhull expects to have open a
total of 145 beds within the next few months in preparation for
the closing of Cumberland Hospital. That 65-year-old
municipal facility currently serves the even larger Ft. Greene,
Red Hook and downtown Brooklyn catchment area.
Unlike Greenpoint, Cumberland has been designated for a
family care facility to open in one of the hospital's newer wings
when the full plant closes, possibly in late April or early May
when its affiliation with Brooklyn Hospital, the back-up
medical facility, expires.
"Cumberland is a much bigger hospital with a denser and
poorer community than Greenpoint, explained Ricke. "The
current facility at Greenpoint is under-utilized and right now
we expect its top utilization to be about 18 to 20,000 patient
visits a year," he continued. "But at Cumberland, the main
use is the outpatient facility. We expect at least 80 to 100,000
patient visits a year and need this center with a wide range of
services, something like the one at Sydenham in Harlem
because this population would never go to Greenpoint.
Meanwhile, the newly formed task force in the Greenpoint,
Williamsburg area is watchdogging future city moves on
disposal of the old plant.
Originally, HHC had attempted quietly to turn the vacant
Greenpoint buildings over to the city's Department of General
Services by early December, and, hence, to relieve itself of any
health care responsibility at that site.
Health Statistics on North Brooklyn
An insightful study by the Religious Committee for
the NYC Health Crisis, an interfaith group founded in
1979, shows the serious health problems faced by low in-
come communities in Brooklyn. "The infant mortality
rate, recognized as one of the most reliable proxy
measures for the general health status of a community,"
the study says, "is almost twice as high in Ft. Greene in
Brooklyn (served now by Cumberland Hospital) as it is
in New York City, and more than twice the national
average of 12 infant deaths per 1,000 live births.
"In Ft. Greene, 27 infants out of every 1,000 live bir-
ths die before they are one year old," while in New York
City and Brooklyn as a whole, the figure is 16 out of
every 1,000.
The study also revealed that the number of expectant
mothers receiving late or no prenatal care has increased
significantly since 1976. In the parts of Brooklyn served
by Greenpoint and Cumberland, five health centers ex-
ceed the citywide percentage of babies born to mothers
without adequate prenatal care: Bedford, with 27.6 per-
cent; Brownsville, with 21.8 percent; Bushwick, with
27.7 percent; Ft. Greene, with 27.2 percent; and
WiIliamsburg/ Greenpoint, with 21 percent.
Also, the Department of Health reported the first
significant increase in tuberculosis in this area in the past
The task force has blocked HHC in that effort and is cur-
rently mobilizing community and political support to keep the
city from reneging on its health care commitment here.
According to Hattem, an HHC hearing is tentatively plan-
ned for January \0 at which time the community will push for
a responsible, alternative reuse for this site-possibly the crea-
tion of a family care center there.
In the meantime, the task force in mid-December was calling
for the establishment of an emergency 24-hour patient
stabilization unit at Greenpoint to compensate for the current
overcrowding at Woodhull.
The Greenpoint community board has said that the facility
30 years, citing a 17 percent increase between 1978 and
1979. The rate of T.B. cases per 1,000 population for
New York is 20.1; but in these five health center districts,
the rates are much higher: Bedford Stuyvesant, 41;
Bushwick, 31; Ft. Greene, 49; Red Hook/ Gowanus, 25;
and Williamsburg/Greenpoint, 24.
According to the committee's analysis, "These alarm-
ing rates can be attributed, in part, to the economic and
social conditions which disproportionately affect the
health of poor and minority communities.
"The high rates in infant mortality, late or no prenatal
care, and T.B., therefore, also reflect the failure of the
care delivery system to provide basic services which are
adequate, accessible, and acceptable to people who need
them most." They are, the study emphasized, the least
expensive to provide, but their neglect can lead to more
serious problems which require very costly services to
treat.
The Religious Committee on the New York City Crisis
provides information, printed materials, speakers, and
other resources and assistance on New York City health
issues. For additional information, caB or write: Joann
Thompson, coordinator, 490 Riverside Drive, Room
243, New York, N.Y. 10027. Tel: (212) 222-5900. Ext.
226/227. 0 S.B.
can be converted with minimal expenditures for renovation
and a separate heating system to a family care center.
Asked to comment on the present impasse between the
HHC and the community regarding the corporation's accoun-
tability in the closing of Greenpoint, Dianne Lacey, a member
of the corporation's 16-member board, who has consistently
opposed hospital cuts and closings, said, "What is
characteristic of the present corporation is its unwillingness to
dialogue or communicate with people. But often this style,
under the Koch influence of restricting and narrowing infor-
mation, backfires and often works to their detriment." O
AL SACCO/ PHOTO NEWS
----------Welfare Policy-----------
Reagaa WeHare Rules Baddire
By Tim Ledwith
J
ANUARY 1, 1983 MARKS THE
fIrst anniversary of two major Reagan
Administration welfare "reforms." One
measure allows state and local public
assistance agencies to impose
"workfare" requirements, which oblige
recipients. to spend mandatory weekly
hours at work sites, either searching for
employment or working at minimum
wage, generally unskilled jobs. The other
initiative, affecting the "income dis-
regard" formula used to determine
whether working poor people can receive
supplemental welfare benefits, makes it
difficult-and in many cases, im-
possible-for low wage workers to aug-
ment their income with public assistance.
(See "Work vs. Welfare," City Limits,
October, 1982.)
Now, though much of the available in-
formation is sketchy, it appears that both
of these measures, born out of the work
ethic bluster that characterized the
Reagan election campaign in 1980, are
backfiring. Designed to thin out the
welfare rolls, the new income disregard
rules are instead actually forcing some
working families back onto full welfare
benefits. And workfare requirements,
ostensibly intended to make some welfare
clients pay for their aid and to force
others off the roils, are being realized far
more slowly than federal policy-makers
had hoped.
Back on Welfare
Before last January I, welfare house-
holds with outside earnings were allowed
to disregard a portion of those earnings,
and deduct some work-related expenses,
when they figured the net income which
determined their level of need for public
assistance. When it became clear that the
Reagan Administration would succeed in
effectively eliminating the disregard pro-
vision, a Congressional Budget Office
study estimated that 188,000 welfare
families would consequently lose their
benefits. The same report speculated that
a third of those recipients would be com-
pelled to quit their jobs and return to full
welfare by the end of 1982.
VI
5
~ g
welfare office on West 34th Street.
What has actually happened? The pic-
ture is still blurry, but a December 14
House of Representatives hearing on the
issue, held by Illinois Rep. Paul Simon,
sharpened it somewhat.
A White House spokesperson at the
hearing blithely estimated that just 10 to
12 percent of the welfare households that
were receiving supplemental benefits a
year ago have gone back onto full bene-
fits. But welfare advocates pointed out
that data collection by most state social
services agencies simply cannot measure
the new regulations' effects. They said
several governmental and academic
studies were underway to gather the in-
formation, which in most states must be
collected through site visits and interviews
at welfare centers.
The only clear reading on the issue
came from Wisconsin, the sole state in the
union that tracks all its welfare cases ac-
cording to clients' specific reasons for
seeking public assistance. There, a repre-
sentative from the state social services
department testified, computer records
show that 40 percent of those households
that got supplemental welfare last year
19
~
'"
UJ
have since quit their jobs and applied for
full assistance.
If that figure held fast nationally, it
would mean that over 75,000 families
have been weaned back onto welfare de-
pendence by federal efforts to cut them
off.
Back to Work?
For those recipients who were already
on full welfare a year ago, and who were
defIned as "employable" (a category that
generally includes all healthy people who
don't have dependents three years old or
younger), the White House proposed
mandatory workfare requirements. That
proposal emerged in the form of an
amendment to the overall social services
funding biII that passed through Congress
in 1981. For the first time, the amend-
ment allowed state and local welfare
agencies using federal funds to impose
workfare, which threatens uncooperative
clients with the loss of their benefits.
Since last January, 33 states, including
New York, have instituted such re-
quirements, but most have moved slowly,
limiting the scope and nature of their
workfare programs. Only 13 states have
instituted mandatory workfare for all
eligible recipients; the rest have made the
programs optional or limited them to
pilot projects, like New York ~ t a t e ' s
Community Work Experience Program,
which is operating for target groups in 14
counties outside New York City.
The reasons for this caution vary, but
welfare advocates point to three major
ones. First, organized client opposition
has emerged in many areas in response to
reported workfare abuses, particularly
the denial of benefits because of arbitrari-
ly defined "poor performance" at work
sites. Second, public employee unions and
others have opposed the requirements for
fear of unorganized welfare workers
displacing regular public job-holders.
And finally, in an ironic twist, the
workfare ideal has been tempered by
economic reality; in many areas, there are
just not enough available job placements
to cover all "employable" welfare reci-
pients. O
-----------Lead Poisoning------------
Detecting the Lead Paint Danger
Maxine Golub.
A
UTILE NEEDLE ENTERED
the toddler's tiny finger and an
outraged howl filled the building'S lobby.
The cry was contagious. Soon, two
dozen other children and infants waiting
for their lead screening tests began a
chorus of wails. Their mothers laughed
and exchanged glances among
themselves.
At a card table stationed beneath a dim
light bulb, Maxine Golub, coordinator of
the Lead Poisoning Prevention Project of
the Montefiore Hospital and Medical
Center and Lauren Poole, a nurse practi-
tioner at Montefiore's Family Health
Center on East 193rd Street were unper-
turbed. Cooing softly to the youngsters in
both Spanish and English, they continued
to take the tiny blood samples.
By Julia MacDonneU Chang
Such scenes are familiar to the wome.n
who, as part of Montefiore's aggressive
outreach testing project, repeat it weekly
in older Bronx buildings where the pres-
ence of hazardous lead-based paint is
likely.
The blood samples they take are ship-
ped to Montefiore on East 210th Street
where lab technicians measure a blood
substance called erythrocyte protopor-
phyrin or-E.P. If the test is positive, the
blood is tested directly for the presence of
lead.
This E. P. test is the first step in the pro-
cess by which lead poisoning, a known
cause of irreparable brain damage, is
diagnosed and treated.
The Lead Poisoning Prevention Pro-
ject, covering the northwest Bronx, is the
20
only one of its kind in New York City. It
has made it easy for our children to be
tested and treated. Meanwhile, federal
and state funding cutbacks threaten to
decimate the city health department's
lead screening program.
One Child in Five
Project research has brought us bad
news. More than 90 percent of the
buildings in our area, because they were
built ' prior to 1960, contain lead paint.
Lead paint, banned for residential use a
decade ago, is most often hidden beneath
layers of modern latex. But, according to
John F. Rosen, M.D., creator of the
Montefiore project, the paint is extremely
hazardous if the new paint peels.
In the past 14 months, Rosen said, one
in five children tested in the buildings has
been poisoned by such paint. More than
100 neighborhood children have been
hospitalized so far, said Rosen.
Last month, City Limits reported that
a disproportionate number of those
children have been recent Indochinese
refugees who were placed in substandard
housing by federally funded agencies.
The project, funded by $30,000 in
private contributions this year, is simple.
Golub leaflets buildings in the area be-
tween Montefiore and the Family Health
Center where the deadly combination of
young children and peeling lead paint is
likely. The next day, she does theE.P. test
on all children below the age of six. If a
test is positive, Rosen takes over the
medical care, which may include hospit-
alization and a series of injections to
purge the body of its lead.
Golub meanwhile contacts city health
and housing inspectors seeking enforce-
ment of city lead paint laws.
She also teaches the family preventive
measures and encourages it to pursue its
legal right to an apartment free of lead
paint.
Current research, including Rosen's, is
alarming to those who believed the threat
of lead poisoning subsided when the use
of lead paint was banned. The research
shows that mere specks of the paint,
ground into dust or leaching into new
paint, are sufficient to cause the ailment
-especially when the paint is found in
combination with the leaded gas fumes
and industrial emissions which are com-
mon in many city neighborhoods.
New research also shows that lead
poisoning-defined by the Center for '
Disease Control as any lead level higher
than 30 micrograms per deciliter of blood
-is asymptomatic. You cannot look at a
child and see the ailment. The damage
may not reveal itself for years - until he
or she encounters difficulties in school.
Federal Block Grants Threaten Funding
But while new research reaffirms the
dangers of lead in a child's environment,
Reagan's budget policies threaten an
already inadequate city Department of
Health lead screening program.
The National Coalition for Lead Con-
trol told a Congressional committee last
month that a new federal policy of fun-
neling lead screening funds through block
grants to states could reduce lead screen-
ing budgets in many cities by up to 35 per-
cent.
Thomas C. Kaiser, head of the city's
Lead Poisoning Control Program, con-
firmed the dire prediction. Noting that
half his program's funds are federal, he
said, "We will be cut significantly."
For budgetary reasons, he said, New
York state has decided to fund only cases
in which a child's lead level is at least 50
micrograms-more than two-thirds
above the medical definition of lead
poisoning.
Because three-fourths of the health
department's cases are between 30 and 49
micrograms, Kaiser said, "We're afraid
[the state] will use it to justify massive
reductions in our program."
Traditionally, the health department
program goes into action after a child is
diagnosed as lead poisoned. The 5,500
apartment inspections done by the
department this year were in response to
conflfmed poisonings.
The system has resulted in the oft-
repeated plaint that the city uses the
bodies of babies as lead detectors.
Kaiser is frank about the difficulties. "I
know we're missing a lot of kids," he
said. Door-to-door screenings
throughout the city, much like those done
by the Montefiore project, are the only
way to fmd all affected children, Kaiser
said. Given budgetary constraints, he
said, "That's impossible."
Kaiser also admitted that the inspection
process and the task of forcing landlords
to remove lead hazards can take months.
Local Law No.1, passed by the City
Council in January, 1982, attempted to
address the deadly Catch-22 of testing
after poisoning is confirmed.
It assumes that lead paint is present in
any building erected before 1960. If paint
is peeling in such an apartment and young
children live there, the law says, housing
inspectors can be called in by tenants to
confrrm conditions.
If confrrmed, HPD is to issue a so-
called "c" violation, the city's most
serious, and to fme the landlord $25 a day
until the lead paint is removed by scraping
and repainting or other means.
The law, however, is "simply not en-
forced," says Golub. She and Rosen say
efforts to have inspections made have met
with little success.
But HPD's Daniel Joy, deputy com-
missioner for Rent and Housing
Maintenance, tells a different story. At
21
least 100 vilations have been issued since
July, he said, and at least a dozen
landlords have been taken to court.
But, Joy noted, his complement of in-
spectors was not beefed-up with passage
of the law. His 145 inspection teams can
make between 10 and 14 inspections a
day. During winter months, he added,
"Heat would have priority over peeling
paint."
Yet, both Joy and Kaiser said, those
who live in old buildings and have kids
and peeling paint should call HPD's cen-
tral complaint number 960-8400. An in-
spector should arrive within the week,
Joy said.
The greatest stumbling block to the
Montefiore project is the slow and
sometimes non-existent enforcement of
city laws, Golub and Rosen say. As a
result, they say, treated children are
released from the hospital into the en-
vironment that made them sick.
"The situation is deplorable," said
Golub.
Golub and Rosen have travelled
throughout the city and to Washington
with this dire message: Some 800,000
American children currently have
undetected but dangerously high
amounts of lead in their bodies.
If left untreated, they say, the effects
will be profound and irreversible.O
Julia MacDonnell Chang is a free lance
writer who lives in a tenant-owned
building in the Bronx.
Some facts about
LEAD POISONING
In 1981, more children than
eYer were treated at Mont.
ftore Hospital for lead poison-
Ing.
Most children become p0i-
soned from eating chips of
paint that contain lead.
Small amounts of lead In
blood may cause the child
to have leamlng dltncultles.
More severe poisoning may
result In permanent brain
damage.
CITY LiMITS/January 1983
~ ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ruth Sjogren of Crown Heights:
'ORGANIZE AND ORGANIZE!'
T
HE HOUSING PROBLEMS
workshop was fading fast in the
Sunday afternoon. The voices of the
dozen church-attired people were
swallowed by the auditorium's high ceil-
ings and lost amid the buzzing of other
workshops. The small building owner's
third rejoinder to the disbelieving tenant
about eviction rights and wrongs was in-
terrupted by a sharp nasal staccato voice
from the other end of the table. Stan-
ding, the speaker was no taller than
those seated on either side of her.
"If you want to get services you've
got to be prepared to do what we did in
our building," she snapped. "You've
got to organize, organize and organize.
And then you've got to be ready to
strike!" she added fiercely. "And if
they put in [building] receivers, like they
did to us, you've got to give them a
chance, but if need be, strike them,
strike them, and strike them again!"
Her hand slapped the table emphasizing
this message and a few of those close to
nodding off in the sunlight looked up in
astonishment at the diminutive figure
before them. Others, to whom this tiny
woman and her assertiveness were long
familiar, smiled knowingly.
Seventy-two-year-old Ruth Sjogren
(pronounced SHO-gren), who was born
Ruth Gluckman, has been startling the
landlords of Crown Heights, Brooklyn,
since she moved there thirty-two years
ago. She brought with her a stubborn
streak and an energy for organizing
developed in the city's first office
workers local-of District 65. She also
brought her husband who had been
disabled by a stroke and her own fre-
quently incapacitating illness of severe
scoliosis, a curvature of the spine earned
as a child working at garment shop sew-
ing machines. The disease has caused
her to lose eleven inches so that she now
stands just four feet, two i R ~ i l ~ ~ i has
not caused her to lose any of her energy
for a struggle.
22
"My first office job was with the
Federation of Jewish Charities. They
thought their 600 clerical workers didn't
need set working hours, so we'd be
forced to work from 8:30 until late at
night with no overtime. After a while
we got together and everybody brought
an alarm clock and stuck them inside
their desks. We'd sit there from 8:30
until they all went off at nine o'clock
and then we'd start work."
Her apartment building, where she
still lives, was at 150 Crown Street, a
large neo-classical building on a tree-
lined street. "Eva Chess was the
landlord and she took care of it. But
Crown Heights was divided. Blacks liv-
ed on the other side of Eastern Parkway
o and none of the owners on our side
i would rent to them.
i: "When Mrs. Chess's husband passed
iii
"" away she made her son the agent, but
he stole the rents and she decided to sell.
The building started to deteriorate.
"I'd had my first major heart attack.
We couldn't think of moving. I said,
'Ruth, this is the time to get
organizing.' I found two people to work
with and we visited the other tenants. I
told them not to put up signs about our
meetings, but one of them put one in
the elevator saying the meeting was to
be in my apartment. Mrs. Chess showed
up and came in and looked around. She
stayed there for an hour. People came,
saw her, and left.
"In spite of that, eight tenants and
me were able to organize the fust rent
strike. But one was bought off with a
new stove and refrigerator and another
got money to move. We had to start
from scratch.
"Now that the building was falling
apart they decided to rent to blacks. A
lot of the white families got more con-
cerned about that than the conditions
and fled. The elevators stopped runn-
ing. There was crime in the building.
Then Mrs. Chess sold to one of the
worst slumlords around-Leonard
Willig.
"Two other rent strikes were organiz-
ed, one of which was foiled by our at-
torney who didn't show up in court. I
knew trade union, but I didn't know
housing.
"I met Michael McKee around 1970
when he came out to organize for the
Met Council on Housing. He went to
work organizing five other Willig
buildings. All of them showed the same
process: the minute they rented to
blacks they neglected all the services.
"We went out on rent strike again,
this time with the other buildings. Then
they started passing it onto receivers.
We gave each one a chance to show
what they would do; when they did
nothing, we struck them too.
"There was one, a slumlord named
Terranova, who was working with some
others, who thought he could get a loan
to do a cheap rehab and make a lot of
money. They asked me to go with them
to the C.P.C. [Community Preservation
Corporation, a bank consortium that
makes low interest rehab loans.] I
agreed. All the tenants thought I was
selling them out.
"Terranova drove me to the meeting.
When Mike Lappin,the head of c.P.C.,
asked me should they give the loan, 1
said no, and told them everything that
bunch hadn't done for the building.
Terranova didn't give me a ride home.
The C.P.C. didn't give him the loan.
"At Christmas, 1979, it was zero
degrees out and there was no heat or
hot water. Our association had spent
over $20,000 to keep the boiler going.
But we couldn't get anyone to come and
start it up.-At that point there were
ninety vacancies out of 124 units.
Metropolitan Savings Bank foreclosed
again and brought in Philip Rosenberg
from Progressive Management to
manage. And C.P.C. started talking to
another person, Paul Weiner, about
BROOK1 YN ENERGY COOPERATIVE
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buying and doing a rehab. They didn't
ask our opinion this time, but they
made the loan. It was $1.249 million.
Rosenberg had delivered services so we
were pleased. We had a big party in the
lobby with music and dancing.
" Now our building is the best
around. We screen everybody who
moves in and we've got no vacancies.
Everyone wants to move in here. We
still have a tenants association and a
sizable treasury. Should anything hap-
pen, we can still hire an attorney."
Ruth Sjogren's apartment is still un-
painted. The walls are dark with age,
although there is much neat fresh
plaster applied to corners and cracks. "I
can't let them in to paint because 1 can't
move everything. My closets, these milk
boxes, are stuffed with files from the te-
nant association. I gave away a set of
china to make room for the papers.
" These are the things we accomplish-
ed, " she says. " It didn' t happen
automatically." D T.R.
REMEMBER FOR
typesetting, design
layout and camera work
562 Atlantic Ave. (near 4th Ave.)
858-8803
Advance
Graphic & Printing Services
(212) 852-7142
58 Third Ave. Brooklyn
23 CITY LIMITS/January 1983
Code Enforcement: An Impossible Dream?
By Rachel Sanchez
L
AST YEAR, THE CITY HOUS-
ing agency confirmed 475,000 com-
plaints about unsafe or inadequate condi-
tions in rental housing. And, according to
the department of Housing Preservation
and Development, the situation is worst
in city-owned buildings-89 percent of
them have up to 100 certified housing
code violations. Despite these large
figures, tenants who want to ameliorate
the situation find that quick, effective
remedies are not available; a lack of code
inspectors and inadequate enforcement
methods prevent many violatons from
being resolved, and instead allow them to
accumulate.
Clear, On Paper
Still, the city's housing code is clear, if
only on paper. Housing code violations
are physical inadequacies in plumbing,
wiring, heating and other building
systems. They are classified as class "A"
violations, inadequacies that are "not
hazardous"; "B" violations, problems
like holes in the walls or loose wiring,
which are hazardous; and "C" viola-
tions, "immediately hazardous" situa-
tions such as cascading leaks which
should be taken care of as soon as possi-
ble.
When such conditions exist and owners
do not repair them within a reasonable
amount of time, building tenants, local
community board members or a tenant
advocacy agency can start the code en-
forcement process in motion by calling or
writing a certi fied letter to the city housing
agency's Central Complaint Bureau,
describing the conditions and requesting
an inspection.
An inspection is supposed to be im-
mediately ordered for all emergency com-
plaints. When the complaint is not an
emergency, the building owner is notified
and the party who made the complaint is
later contacted to determine whether the
repair has been made. If not, a code en-
forcement inspector should be sent to the
building to see, if housing standards are
Where To Call
While the city's code enforcement process leaves much to be desired, it's
still important for tenants to report viQlations in their homes, both in the
hope of eventual enforcement and as a basis for future tenant organizing.
When landlords fail to meet basic habitability standards, tenants can call
the city housing agency's Central Complaint Bureau at 960-4800 to get their
grievances on the record.
Heating standards, by far the basis of most code complaints at this time of
year, are in effect from October I to May 31. The minimum requirements are
as follows: from 6 A.M. to 10 P.M., if it's below 55 degrees outside, the in-
side temperature must be 68 degrees; between 10 P.M. and 6 A.M., if the
outside temperature is below 40 degrees, it must be at least 55 degrees
inside. 0
being violated. If they are, a Notice of
Violation, listing the violations and the
date by which they must be corrected, is
sent to the owner.
Once that notice is received, class" A"
violations must be corrected in 90 days,
"B" problems in 30 days and "C" condi-
tions within 24 hours, according to
HPD' s Division of Code Enforcement.
24
Under city rules, the offending owner
must certify, in the form of an affidavit,
that he or she has removed the violation
before the deadline. The tenant then
receives a copy of the owner's certifica-
tion with a Notice of Complaint form,
which can be mailed to HPD if the viola-
tion has not been corrected. If the viola-
tion p e ~ s i s t s , the Division of Code En-
forcement must reinspect the conditions
within 70 days of the date it receives the
owner's certification.
Uninspected and Unrepaired
Despite these fairly clear cut pro-
cedures, many housing code and heat
violations go unreported and even those
reported are often left uninspected and
unrepaired. One city-owned building in
Manhattan's Clinton neighborhood il-
. lustrates the problem.
In October, 1982,793 9th Avenue had
55 code violations, according to city
records. These included one "C", 29 "B"
and 24 "A" violations. Although the
"A" conditions were reported in July,
1977, and reinspected in October that
year, the repairs called for-white-
washing and painting the cellar walls and
ceilings-never occurred. The "B" viola-
tions, which included broken cellar walls,
were reported in 1977 and the immediate-
ly hazardous "c" conditions were found
in 1979; yet in both cases, building inspec-
tors never returned to verify whether the
repairs had been made, and the violations
remained unresolved.
"What happens is the violations are
reported but are not followed up on, so
they accumulate over the years,"said Cor-
inne Coleman from the city housing agen-
cy's Clinton Neighborhood Preservation
Office. "My feeling is that every
building should be inspected once a
year," she added.
Coleman explain.ed that building com-
plaints are left unattended because of the
increasing amount of violations and the
decreasing number of building inspec-
tors. The figures back up her observation.
In 1975, HPD employed 600 inspectors,
but by 1980, the inspection force had
dwindled by 213. Although there were
410 full-time inspectors working in 1981,
city records show only 250 were actually
working in the field. According to Joseph
Shuldiner, HPD Assistant Commissioner
in charge of the department's Evaluation
and Compliance unit, during 1982 HPD
employed 395 code inspectors to check
for violations in all of New York City's
130,000 multiple dwelling units. "It's a
remarked Shuldiner. "We in-
spect some and others go unattended."
And even in buildings that do get in-
spected, the process is far from fool-
proof; inspectors who go out in the field
to verify heat and hot water complaints
face especially serious obstacles. "We've
received 163 calls in 3 weeks from 1150
Grand Concourse in the Bronx:' an
operator from the Central Complaints
Bureau office said recently. "The pro-
blem is that there are not enough inspec-
tors and when they do go to a particular
building, the landlord turns the heat on,
then turns it off as soon as the inspector
leaves, and we get the same call the next
day. "
Finally, for owners who don't fall bet-
ween the cracks of the enforcement pro-
cess, and who refuse to correct certified
housing code violations within the aIIot-
ted remedy period, fmes are the incentive
for repairs. Under HPD's rules, an owner
must pay a flat rate of $50 for not atten-
ding to an "A" violation. A $100 fee is
imposed for not immediately taking care
of "B" violations, and $10 daily fee is
called for thereafter. For not attending to
a "c" violation, the owner is charged $25
a day.
But this alternative doesn't always
solve the problem. "Because building
code enforcement proceedings rely on the
court system, like the criminal system it
doesn't always work," said Shuldiner.
"An owner can accumulate $50,000 for
not attending to 20 violations, but the ac-
tual court proceeding is often tied up for
months because of the potential liability
involved."
It is clear that the enforcement ofhous-
ing court judgements against landlords
with persistent violations could do a lot
more to encourage compliance. In the city
fiscal year that started in 1980, HPD
records show, over $2 million worth of
such fines were levied; $590",000 was ac-
tually collected. During the fiscal year
starting in 1981, more than $2.5 million
was imposed in fines for non-compliance;
about $800,000 was collected. And in the
current fiscal year's first six months,
nearly $6 million in fines has been levied,
according to the housing agency; but so
far, just $500,000 has been paid by offen-
ding owners. 0
Roche/ Sanchez writesfrequent/y for
the Clinton Community Press.
BARLEM'S BROWNSTONE AUCTION
Almost a year later, the 12 winners in
the celebrated but controversial lottery of
the dozen city-owned brownstones in
Harlem are still waiting for the paper pro-
cessing to end and the construction to
begin.
The lottery, which was weighted in
favor of Harlem residents amid charges
that the city was promoting gentrifica-
tion, drew 2,200 applications from as far
away as California. ("A Game of
Numbers in Harlem," June/July, 1981).
"We are plugging right along, but we
still haven't closed any loans," said Depu-
ty Housing Commissioner Robert Davis,
who is in charge of shepherding this
special rehabilitation and home owner-
ship program through the city's
bureaucracy to completion.
According to Davis, the city has work-
ing drawings for the majority of the pro-
perties, and, if all goes well, the new home
owners wiII be in residence by the end of
1983.
The city has set $1.2 million aside to
cover the rehabilitation costs. Mortgage
rates over a 20-year-period will range
from three to nine percent, depending on
income. Most recipients, Davis said, will
qualify for interest rates at the lower end
of the scale. He also said that most pro-
perties will require the maximum
$130,000 reserved for the rehab work
because they need extensive rebuilding.
The minimum income requirement to
qualify for the lottery was $20,000 for a
family of four. Nine of the brownstones
were sold for $5,000 each, while three
25
others went for $14,000, $35,000, and
$42,000, respectively.
During the past year, the city has con-
ducted extensive credit checks on the
original winners. According to Davis,
several of the first place winners dropped
out of the program because the financing
was not feasible for them or because they
were not good credit risks.
One winner - Priscilla Ashley - who
paid $5,000 for her building at 26 West
120th Street, still has not seen the inside of
her new home. "I'm anxious to get
started, but I know how slowly city
government moves," she said. "It would
be nice to be in place by summer,
though." Ashley plans to live in one unit.
of her building and rent the other three. 0
S.B.

BUD'S EXTRA
EFFORT
Despite what many malcontents say
these days, the department of HUD is
bending"over backwards to get housing
aid to those in need.
A recent example of this came to light
in the investigation into a deal that
almost made two close Reagan
associates owners of several HUD-
foreclosed properties at a special in-
siders price ("Shopping in HUD's
Bargain Basement," Aug./Sept. 1982).
In order to uphold the $10.9 million of-
fer negotiated secretely for the proper-
ties by the President's former chief
counsel, Edward Weidenfeld, and his
wife Sheila, HUD employees altered of-
ficial documents, making the properties
appear to be worth much less than they
are, according to HUD's Insepctor
General. Among the properties is the
203-unit low income Sherwood Village
in Corona, Queens, which has fallen in-
to increasing disrepair as it awaits the
outcome.
HUD Inspector General, Charles L.
Dempsey, warned that the tampering
"could constitute a criminal act."
The Weidenfelds apparently planned
a co-op conversion of two properties
that could have netted them an
estimated $4 million profit. 0 S.B. &
T.R.
TENANTS
BECOME OWNERS
When the president of a real estate
development firm called American Oreo,
Inc. chose 229 East 4th Street on the bud-
ding Lower East Side to be the prototype
for other investment projects, he picked
the wrong building ("Tenants Claim Vic-
tory in Lower East Side Tug of War,"
February; 1982).
After tangling with the picket lines of
the six families and their neighbors, the
realtor dropped his bid to redeem the
building from the city for its back taxes .
Soon after, the building was admitted in-
to the Tenant Interim Lease program.
Last month, after whizzing through
HPD's sales pipeline, the families pur-
chased their apartments for $250 apiece.
The new owners have decided not to
cover over a painted warning of "SPEC-
T ATORS OUT!" adorning the
" building's entrance. It still goes, said one.
The same day as their sale closing,
however, the perils of homeownership
were demonstrated by the seepage from a
busted oil tank. "Now it's our
headache," said a co-oper.O T.R.
In Rem Rent
Decision Appealed
A decision in State Supreme Court that
ordered the city housing department to
promulgate rules and regulations with
adequate time for tenant response before
raising rents in city-owned buildings has
been appealed. ("Judge Voids City Rent
Hikes," December, 1982).
At the same time, Justice Sheldon S.
Levy's order released in late November,
1982, permanently enjoins the city from
collecting rent increases levied in
February, 1982, from tenants residing at
1171,1175, 1179, and 1186 Clay Avenue
in the Bronx.
These buildings, which figured in the
lawsuit brought by Bronx Legal Services
and the Union of City Tenants, are enroll-
ed in the city's alternative management
program known as the Private Ownership
Management Program (POMP). In some
26
cases, the increases requested by the city-
approved private managing agent exceed-
ed 200 IX:rcent. Where tenants paid the
unauthorized increases, the city has been
ordered to return the rent overcharges.
According to Jeff Glenri of the
corporation counsel office, Judge Levy's
decision places a priority on the city's
developing a permanent rent restruct-
uring policy for its vast tax-foreclosed
holdings. 0 S.B.
RENT BIKE FOR
BRONX PROJECT
The 324 tenant families at the sprawl-
ing 1,400-unit moderate income Hillside
Houses development in the North Bronx
began in December, 1982, to pay a 26 per-
cent rent hike, following a nine-month
period of court-ordered abated rents.
Following a four-month rent strike,
which ended early in March, 1982, when
tenants withheld almost $400,000 in rent,
the management firm for the state-
supervised Mitchell-Lama project agreed
to make major repairs and live up to a
rehabilitation schedule for this aging,
deteriorating housing development built
in the 19305 and placed under Mitchell-
Lama supervision in 1972.
The project was formerly owned and
managed by U.S. Rep. James Scheuer,
Democrat of the Bronx, whose mother
still retains part ownership with her in-
terests represented by her son, Richard J.
Scheuer. ("Bronx Mitchell-Lama Renters
Win A First Round," April, 1982).
According to Noble Bratton, president
of the tenants association, the manager
for the development - East River
Management Company - has done very
little to live up to its settlement agreement
stipulated in Bronx Housing Court.
"If they've done 50 of the 254 repair
forms that were filed, that's a lot," said
Bratton, who said that the tenants were
now paying the $19.36 per-room, per-
month increase but that they might take
action against the management company
if the repairs are not made soon. The in-
crease brings their current monthly rent to
$93 per room. O S.B.
ACORN Col11es to Squat
By Michael Henry Powell
A
s THE MUCH BALLYHOOED
Winter of the Century"
gathers strength, housing and communi-
ty advocacy groups are organizing in
virtually every section of New York
City. Yet, while each group tends to
zealously guard its turf and there fre-
quently seem to be twenty-three dif-
ferent opinions for every twenty
organizers, many community activists
find themselves increasingly dissatisfied
with the state of organizing in the city.
They point to an over-reliance on
shrinking city and state funds and stale,
out-moded strategies.
The last year's restlessness has pro-
duced two new schools for organizers,
several borough-wide coalitions, mili-
tant action around in-rem housing,
strong efforts to rally support for the
Reclaim America campaign (sponsored
by the National People's Action) and
electoral efforts ranging from the Al
Yann-Major Owens Coalition for Em-
powerment victories in black Brooklyn
to unsuccessful Unity Party attempts to
run a state-wide tenant and community
activist slate. There is clearly room,
however, for more organizing and new
strategies in New York.
Recently, a new group has stepped in-
to this breach, with eight organizers and
25 more planned for dispersement
across Brooklyn's Crown Heights,
Bedford Stuyvesant, Brownsville and
East New York, and a strategy that en-
compasses not just neighborhoods, but
26 states. Formed 12 years ago in
Arkansas as an experimental project of
the National Welfare Rights Organiza-
tion, the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform
Now-ACORN-has come to New York
to implement a strategy of squatting in
abandoned buildings and to organize
for jobs. Though criticized by some
organizers and organizations for an
aloofness and unwillingness to spend
time coalition building, ACORN has
established a markedly successful record
running squatting campaigns.
A way of life for thousands of Euro-
peans and now a strategy employed suc-
cessfully in cities as disparate as
Philadelphia, Tulsa and Detroit, squat-
ting has been a long time coming to
New York. Though several groups have
employed a squatting strategy since the
late sixties, most community organiza-
tions in New York have generally work-
ed within existing city programs. A
veteran of the Philadelphia squatters
movement, John Kest, a bearded .. soft-
spoken lead organizer for ACORN ex-
plained, "Squatting gives people a sense
of empowerment. our role is to ask peo-
ple if they'd like a house and to point
out the options-they have to make the
27
choice to move."
That move can result in arrest.
Though ACORN traditionally targets
city or federally owned, abandoned
housing, they are not opposed to squat-
ting in abandoned, privately owned
housing; this could form part of their
strategy in gentrified communities such
as Park Slope. Said Kest, "That's the
people's choice. We make it clear to
them what the differing consequences
could be and that we will stick by them.
And we do not offer technical
assistance. It is our point of view that if
enough people get into the houses,
you'll get a big enough coalition to de-
. mand rehab dollars and easy payment
terms."
ACORN approaches its organizing
with overall national and ideological ob-
jectives. They favor re-distributive anti-
corporate economic policies and com-
munity control of the political process.
Their organizing ostensibly encourages
residents to make policy decisions; the
organizer's role is that of a low-key
facilitator.
ACORN's national structure follows
similar lines. Two members of each
neighborhood board-composed of
local citizens-'-serve on the state board
and the state board appoints two
members to sit on the national board,
which votes on national policy and cam-
paigns. Lead organizers are directly
responsible to the local boards. As Kest
commented, "Given the direct line up
from the local groups, national cam-
paigns almost always dovetail with local
initiatives. The squatting movement was
developed in this manner."
Like other national social change
organizations, ACORN's weakness has
the same root as its strength; its national
agenda and strategies are criticized as
overly rigid and occasio.,ally conflicting
with other organizing ehorts.
Organizers, including some in Brooklyn,
complain ACORN tends not to work in
coalition; groups either play ACORN's
game or they work alone. In
Massachusetts, similar problems with
the well-established, state-wide Mass
Fair Share organization, led to open
conflict between the two groups.
ACORN eventually pulled out of toe
state.
John Kest views the question of con-
flict philosophically. "Look," he said
with a smile. "If we stopped every time
we heard there was a group organizing
in an area, we would have stopped in
Arkansas in 1970. We think there is
plenty of room for a variety of ap-
proaches." He pointed out that
ACORN has co-endorsed a number of
activities taking place in north
Brooklyn, including a large tenant
march and rally spearheaded by two
other housing groups. Kest commented,
" We are willing to work with others but
we also are serious about accomplishing
certain goals which can not be put on
hold indefinitely."
ACORN fundraises through door-to-
door canvassing and contact with foun-
dations funding social change programs.
Though they canvass poor areas,
ACORN acknowledges much of their
money comes from other, more affluent
communities. Kest stressed, "When we
come into an area, we go knocking on
doors mainly to find out if the people
are associated with any other groups
and if they are interested in our pro-
grams. In the case of squatting, we try
to see if they would like to have a house
to live in."
As for ACORN' s ability to work in
coalition, Kest mentioned the "excellent
working relationship" they have with
Assemblyman Al Vann, Liberal of
Brooklyn, and Democratic Congress-
man-elect Major Owens in Bushwick,
Bedford Stuyvesant and Crown
Heights." We would not plan to do
housing organizing there unless we had
their support ," he insisted.
ACORN is concentrating its initial
fire on getting city assistance to would-
be homesteaders in Brownsville. It has
picketed the city housing department
and Brooklyn's Borough Hall to get
meetings with officials. The group is
contrasting the large tax abatement and
loan granted to the construction of a
huge network satellite dish in the Spring
Creek area near Brownsville with the
lack of funds for housing.
As it launches heavy organizing cam-
paigns through Brooklyn' s diverse
neighborhoods, ACORN is hopeful of
repeating its successes elsewhere. At the
same time it may be giving other groups
a look at another style of organizing. 0
Michael Henry Powell is a reporter for
The Phoenix in Brooklyn.
Free Insurance Appraisal
Richards and Fenniman, in insuring tenant and community
groups for over 10 years, IS offermg to the readers of City Limits a free insurance
appraisal of their building.
We know your needs, your requirements, and how to help you get insurance
financing. And most important, we can get you the best prices.
a free insurance appraisal of your building and an evaluation of your current
msurance program call me:
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Richards and Fenniman, Inc.
156 William Street, New York, New York 10038
NEW YORK CITY IN THE THIRTIES:
A Familiar Look Back
By Rachel B. Gorlin
The WPA Guide to New York City: The
Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s
New York, originally published in 1939,
reissued in 1982 with a new introduction.
Pantheon Books, . 680 pp., paperback
price $8.95
.. QUICK READING OF THE
ftnewly reissued WPA Guide to New
York City makes it seem that the city has
changed a lot less in 44 years than one
might have thought. For example, the
homeless could be seen "sleeping in all-
night restaurants, in doorways, and on
loading platforms, furtively begging, or
waiting with hopeless faces for some
bread line or free lodging house to open.
No agency at present (1939) provides ade-
quate food, shelter, and clothing for these
wanderers." Shades of Sidney
Schanberg!
And Greenwich Village was changing
from a low rent, bohemian, intellectually
and artistically alive community to an in-
creasingly expensive area inhabited by
"the well-to-do and white collar workers
attracted by the glamor associated with
the addresses." Sounds like testimony at
any recent Community Board Two public
hearing. Riverside Drive, Central Park
West, and West End Avenue, then as
now, had their prominent place among
"Manhattan's aristocratic thorough-
fares." The past 44 years have not ap-
preciably improved the poverty-stricken
areas of Morisania, Brownsville, and Red
Hook (though the ethnicity of the low in-
come people who live there has changed
radically in that time).
29
OJ
Q
:;
o
~
~
iii
8
!!;
::;
OJ
But, the considerable literary and
historical merits of the Guide aside for the
moment, its amazing popularity among
New York's book-buying public (within a
month of its re-release it was number two
on the Village Voice's monthly best-seller
list) is a sad reminder of the disturbing
transformation New York City has
undergone since 1939. New Yorkers'
nostalgia for a less fearful city with a
greater sense of community is, I think, the
subtle but key reason for the Guide's
broad appeal today. The joy of being able
to walk the city with relatively little fear of
street crime in most neighborhoods-
even at night-leaps off the pages of the
Guide continually. The book is a poig-
nant reminder that New York City was
once a place where one did not always
have to lock ones door, where children at
least learned to read in the city's public
schools, where more New Yorkers knew
their neighbors.
Despite Ills, A Working Social Contract
Yet the WPA Guide doesn't draw an
idealized portrait of the city. The slum
tenements of the Lower East Side are
described bluntly as "crowded, noisy,
and squalid," and their grim, exploitative
history is well-told. Racial prejudice in
employment, education, and housing is
openly discussed. The Depression's
devastating impact on workers is a vivid
depiction of that troubled time. Even the
American Nazis' open parades and pro-
paganda operation in Yorkville make an
appearance in the book. Still, for all the
familiar social ills aired in the Guide, one
is left with the sense that New York's
social contract was mainly intact in 1939.
Certain bonds of trust and mutual respect
existed between New Yorkers then, bonds
that exist only very tenuously in some
neighborhoods now-and are hardly to
be found at all in others. The WPA Guide
should bring out a wistful sadness in any
true lover of the city, a sense of longing
for what we (and many other urban areas)
have lost in the past 44 years.
That sadness is ironic, though, because
the Guide is essentially a celebration of
the Empire City. The excitement of many
youthful researchers and writers sent out
into the neighborhoods of the city by the
Works Progress Administration's Federal
Writers Project is palpable; the city in all
of its seediness and brilliance was alive for
them, and their generally well-written en-
thusiasm is contagious to a new genera-
tion of readers. Among the then-
unknown writers who worked on the New
York City Guide are Richard Wright,
John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, and David
Ignatow. It was a huge collective effort
designed to provide jobs for indigent
writers, poets, playwrights, essayists, and
others for whom the written word was
their stock in trade.
And there were quite a few out of work
word-smiths in New York in the late
1930s. More than 500 people in total
worked on the editorial staff of the New
York outpost of the Federal Writers Pro-
ject. (The New York City Guide is only
one of many publications, including
Guides to many of the then-48 states and
a good number of major cities; I hope
Pantheon is planning to reprint more of
these, especially the first volume of the
New York City Guide, New York
Panorama, which has an excellent
chapter on the city's housing problems.)
The WPA Guide clearly rc;:quired exten-
sive research, both historical and the kind
that calls for a lot of leg-work in the com-
munities, talking to "real people."
The section on the Union Square
District is an example of the Guide at its
best. The historical detail is vivid and
evocative to anyone familiar with the
bedraggled present-day square. It is possi-
ble to envision Union Square as it was in
the 1930s from the Guide's description of
various rallies and demonstrations held
on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti, and
those protesting national economic
policies.
Many of the other sections on Manhat-
tan are equally good, although it is disap-
pointing to note that this seems to be at
the expense of comprehensive reporting
on most neighborhoods in other bor-
oughs. Unfortunately, the descriptive
neighborhood sketches that are so com-
plete when dealing with Manhattan's
communities do not do justice to the
richness of Brooklyn or the Bronx. Even
when dealing with the other boroughs,
though, the Guide is replete with
historical material hard to find in other
popular sources. Did you know, for ex-
ample, that Sheep shead Bay was the
home of a noted horse race track and
bookie joint in the 1870s? Had you realiz-
ed that as early as the 1920s pollution had
driven bathers away from Idlewild Point,
once a popular beach resort on Jamaica
Bay? Were you aware that the
Amalgamated Apartments, built by the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union
on Van Courtland Park South in the
Bronx, had service co-ops in the 1930s to
supply "groceries, milk, laundry, elec-
tricity, and bus transportation"?
Although its hotel prices are hopelessly
out of date ($6.00 per night at the
Waldorf-Astoria in 1939-their mini-
mum rate, of course), the Guide is still
helpful for walking the streets. In some
30
neighborhoods few of the actual build-
ings listed still stand, but the sense of the
neighborhood as it once was is definitely
useful for self-organized walking tours.
(The fairly current American Institute of
Architects Guide to New York is a useful
supplement for such peregrinations.)
The WPA Guide is very much like the
city itself, depressing and elating at the
same time, diffuse and simultaneously
dense in its detail. Inevitably the pas-
sionate New Yorker reading this book will
be left with regrets: Why did some neigh-
borhoods fall prey to abandonment?
How did the city's social contract break
down? Why were certain buildings de-.
molished and replaced with characterless
high-rises? Ultimately my own regrets
come back to Reaganomics: Why not
another Works Progress Administration,
Federal Writers Project, and an updated
Guide? Maybe 500 bright, hungry left-
wing writers could discover in a couple of
years what has h a p p e ~ e d to this city since
1939. I don't think the subject deserves
anything less. O
Rachel B. Gorlin worked as an assistant
to Congressman Charles Schumer of
Brooklyn. She is currently a free-lance
writer.
Tenant Bugged,
Landlord Busted
A Manhattan landlord who resented a
lawsuit filed against him by his tenants,
was arrested shortly before Thanksgiving
for having placed an illegal wiretap on a
tenant leader's telephone. According to
the charges, brought by Manhattan
District Attorney Robert Morgenthau,
Stephen DiLorenzo, 25, of 121 Madison
Avenue spied on the tenant for three
months. The building'S super and its
managing agent took part in monitoring
the tapes.
The tenant, Marcy Boucher, filed a
lawsuit along with other residents of the
buildings at 643-645 and 647 Second
Avenue against DiLorenzo and sought his
removal as manager for failure to make
repairs. DiLorenzo retaliated by paying
an electronics expert $200 to place the tap.
The recordings were delivered to
DiLorenzo at his office. He could get up
to four years in prison for
eavesdropping. 0
-
~ ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Director of
CommunHy Management
Neighborhood based non-proftt housing management
and rehabilitation organization seekl penon with the
following quallflcatlonl: \
Three yearl experience In management o.
neighborhood programl for low and moderate Income
relldents. Experience with housing cooperattvel and
tenant organizing ellenHal. Strong IIlcal and ad-
ministrative Iklllii demonstrated abilHy to lupervIse a
moderate sized staff and to coordinate all program
funcHons. Knowledge of building maintenance and
rehabilitation Important. Fomillartty with governmental
agencies and funding sourcel dellrable. Relldent of
Clinton neighborhood and fluency In Spanish prefer-
red.
Salary: low $20,000'1
Send relumes to: Clinton Houllng Development C0m-
pany Inc.
~ 10th Avenue
New York, NY 10036
AttenHon: Sondra Thomas
RECEPTIONIST /
CLERK TYPist
Manhattan Valley Development CorporatIon Is
s .. k l n ~ a pennanent full "me Receptionist/Clerk
Typist.
A bilingual penon preferred, fluent In both
English. Spanish.
Must have good communication and clerical
skills, type a minimum of 50 wpm and enjoy
dealing with the public.
Salary range: $10,000-11,500 annually.
Send resumes to: Ms. Ellenor Hopkins
M.V.D.C.
931 Columbus Avenue
New York. NY 10025
URBAN HOUSING
SPECIALIST
$15,000-$18,000
. Under the direct supervision of the Executive Director: .
1) Will coordinate a program which will Identity
selected buildings In a targeted area In the Clinton
neighborhood. These buildings should be feasible for
rehabilitation In order to provide for low and moderate
resident homeownershlp and/or cooperative owner
ship.
2) Will research and prepare all necessary data on
buildings, Including tenant profiles, building cash flow,
mortgage, tax and other financial structures.
3) Will act as liaison with private and governmental len
ding Institutions In preparing, negotiating, and follow
Ing up on loan applications.
4) Will provide targeted homeowners and selected block
associations with Information on arson prevention and
energy eonservatlon.
5) Will assist In preparing required reports.
Qualifications:
- A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college
and one year of fulltlme paid experience In housing,
community organizing, urban deve10pment, urban
planning or related field; or
- High school graduation or Its equivalent and five years
of full-time paid experience as described above; or
- A satisfactory equivalent combination of education
and experience.
- Should have excellent writing skills, and enjoy working
with community people.
- Clinton residents preferred.
31
Send resumes to: AHentlon Sondra Thomas
executive Director
Clinton Housing Development Com
pany
664-6 Tenth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10036
POUCY ANALYST
Non-profit, citywide association of community group
members seeks experienced person with excellent
analytical skills in budget and policy issues, and
strong background in program development.
Writing and leadership skills are essential.
Knowledge of housing programs and issues prefer-
red. Salary: between 519,500 - 521,500. Equal op-
portunity employer. Send resumes to:
Executive Director
Association of Neighborhood
Housing Developers'
424 West 33fd Street - 9th Floor
New York, New York 10001
'I '~-....._-_".\.---- ~~.--..-~_~ __ ~__ .__
City Limits has news about New York's
neighborhoods you can't find anywhere else.
~ iii . : i; !

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