December 1990 New York's Community Affairs News Magazine $2.

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Q U E S T I O N I N G W E L F A R E R E F O R M
U P T O W N I N S P I R A T I O N D B L A C K B U S I N E S S B L U E S
eirv Limirs
Volume XV Number 10
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COVER PHOTOGRAPH
BY LES STONE/IMPACT VISUALS
2/DECEMBER 1990/CITY UMITS
Koch Redux?
J
ust one short year ago a sense of hope spread across New York. To
many, the election of David Dinkins as mayor spelled a new begin-
ning: the symbolism of the city's first black mayor taking office, the
end of 12 years of rule by the divisive Edward Koch and a shake up
in the city's power structure. Carried into office on the backs of the poor,
labor and minority voters, many Dinkins supporters expected a break
from the city's past policies.
But the Dinkins administration has taken a slow but inexorable path
towards policies that can only best be described as Kochian. Sure, David
Dinkins got a bad deal, taking helm just as New York's economy began to
crumble. That still doesn't explain why Dinkins has failed to establish
any kind of vision for the future of his New York. Instead, Dinkins has
flailed about, issuing mixed messages and contradictory plans.
Take, for example, the recently announced Alternative Housing Path-
ways plan, which sprang from Dinkins administration pronouncements
that people were joining the ranks of the homeless just so they could get
a city-subsidized apartment.
The alternative pathways plan will set aside some apartments for
families doubled-up in the homes of friends or relatives from among
those originally earmarked for families in shelters. What does this mean?
Families in welfare hotels will now have to wait a minimum of nine
months-a six month increase-before they become eligible for perma-
nent housing. And those in the hotels will primarily be relegated t-o the
least desirable of city apartments. This new policy, which some have
likened to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, will drive the same
kind of wedge between the haves and have nots as any Koch-era policy.
The administration has also been illegally placing homeless families
in hotels that do not meet court ordered standards. The city has sent some
500 families with children to 10 hotels that have neither cooking facilities
nor bathrooms in their rooms. It is hard to believe that the man who
authored the compassionate report "A Shelter Is Not A Home" when he
was borough president is now condoning such actions.
We know the choices are hard and the city's resources limited. And we
recognize that Dinkins is listening to homeless advocates-an important
change from the past administration. Yet the mayor is slipping into the
excuses and rationalizations of his predecessor.
The thrill of David Dinkins, the new mayor, may be long gone. But he
still has the opportunity to erase the tawdry legacy of the city's policies
towards the homeless.
* * *
In November, City Limits editors Lisa Glazer and Doug Turetsky won
a journalism award for investigati ve reporting from the National Associa-
tion of Real Estate Editors. The first place award to Glazer and Turetsky
was for their story "Shame of the City," a report on a new generation of
New York's bad landlords. 0
~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
.
.
FEATURES
Is New York's Transit Off Track? 8
The Transit Authority has a decidedly Manhattan-centric
bias.
Questionable Benefits 12
Welfare reform may do more for bureaucracy than it
does for poor women.
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial
Koch Redux? ... .... .. .......... .... ... .......... .... ...... .... ............... 2
Briefs
Path to Controversy .... .......... .... ............. ... .... ........... ..... 4
Banks' Report Card .... ... ......... ... ... .......... .......... ...... ....... 4
Oil Up ........................................................................... 4
Housing Bill Lost in Space? ..... ... .............. ...... ... ... ....... 5
Profile
Uptown Inspiration ...................................................... 6
Pipeline
Minding the Store ...................................................... 17
CityView
Turning Crisis Into Opportunity ............................... 19
Movie Review
The Tenant Psychopath ... .. .... ......... ....... .. .... ......... ..... 20
Inspiration/Page 6
Transit/Page 8
Benefits/Page 12
CITY UMnSIDECEMBER 1990/3
11:1;'1"11
PATH TO
CONTROVERSY
Thousands of affordable
apartments set aside for
homeless families from the
city's shelter system are now
being allocated to the "hidden
homeless" in a controversial
new pal icy recently announced
by the Dinkins administration.
Known as II Alternative
Housing Pathways, II the new
policy will provide 5,700
apartments for low income
families c u r r e n ~ y doubled-up
in overcrowded apartments.
Three thousand apartments
will come from the city' s
Department of Housing
Preservation and Development
(HPD) and 2,700 will come
from the housing authority.
The policy aims to reduce the
number of homeless families
enteril!9 the city's shelter system.
City officials r e c e n ~ y announced
that they could not meet a court
order to close down the welfare
hotels because of an inAux of
families into the city' s shelter
system.
lilt was felt that we had to
take the best units we had and
put them in alternative path-
ways so it would act as an
incentive for doubled-up people
not to come into the shelter
system," says Nancy Wackstein,
director of the Mayor's Office
for Homeless and SRO Housing.
Homeless and housing
advocates have lobbied city
government for years to make
doubled-up families eligible for
apartments set aside for home-
less families. But they say the
new policy meets the needs of
these families at the expense of
families already in the shelter
system.
lilt's important that the
government is recognizing the
needs of homeless families who
are doubled-up, but the way
this is being implemented is
backwards and a serious
mistake," says Steven Banks,
director of the Homeless Family
Rights Project. lilt pits the two
neediest groups against each
other instead of reallocating
housing units from a less
desperate segment of the
population."
Wackstein from the mayor's
office says housing units now set
aside for moderate and middle
4jDECEMBER 1990/CITY UMITS
income families could not be
reallocated for doubled-up
families because this would
require deeper subsidies from
the city. lilt would cost the city
more money and this is a time
when there is no more money
available to make these
buildings work," she says.
The HPD apartments being
reallocated to doubled-up
families will come from pro-
grams that are known for
providing high-quality, newly
renovated apartments: the
Special Initiatives Program, the
Construction Management
Program, the local Initiatives
Support Corporation and
Enterprise. This means that the
primary housing option
available for families in the
shelter system will be lower-
quality apartments centrally
managed by the Department of
Housing Preservation and
Development. And families in
hotels will now have to wait at
least nine months before
becoming eligible for an
apartment.
''The real horror is that by
taking away the good, gut-
rehabilitated units and giving
them to doubled-up families,
you're creating a two-tier
system," adds Rose Anello,
coordinator of the Emergency
Alliance for Homeless Families.
''You're sending a message that
shelter families are secona-
class."
Carol lamberg, executive
director of Settlement Housing
Fund, which is sponsoring a
Construction Management
Program development in the
Bronx, says, ''This makes me
crazed. You don't want to
stigmatize the shelter families-
they deserve a break, too.
They're not suddenly bad
people. It would be better to
take some doubled-up families
and some shelter families as
wei I. II
The "alternative pathways"
policy is intended to reduce the
number of families entering the
shelter system. Despite court
orders to stop using welfare
hotels to provide snelter by this
summer, the city r e c e n ~ y
announced that an inAux of
homeless families into the shelter
system prevents officials from
closing down the hotels. City
officials say they interpret the
inAux of families as a response
to the large numbers of
affordable afXIrtments being
provided for families from the
shelter system.
Many advocates decry the
city's interpretation, saying it
blames homeless families tor
entering the system rather than
focusing on the brooder
problem of limited affordable
housing. ''The city's approoch is
to divert families from the shelter
system rather than develop a
comprehensive plan to address
the underlying causes of the
crisis," says Banks from the
Homeless Family Rights Project.
Responding to this criticism,
Wackstein says the city has to
be pragmatic: ''There's not
enough housing to go around
so the question is how do you
allocate it." Referring to the
way the new policy divides
families from the shelter system
against those that are doubled-
up, she says, lilt's quite disturb-
ing to me, but we are in an
emergency situation. We are
violating a scad of court orders.
We felt we had to take the most
dramatic action to get a handle
on the shelter system .... lts social
engineering at its worst." 0
Usa Glazer
BANKS' REPORT
CARD
The city's Department of
Finance r e c e n ~ y released their
first report card of bank
performance in low income
communities. The finance
department will use the
information to help determine
which banks should receive city
deposits.
"0ur gool is access to
capital and access to banking
services for all New Yorkers,"
says Finance Commissioner
Carol O' Cleireacain. ''We want
to tear down artificial barriers
separating people from the
credit they need to buy homes,
build business and help live
meaningfullives."
Among the big banks that
the city rated, Chemical Bank
received top ratings and
Bankers Trust was at the battom
of the class. The other banks in
the top five were Citibank,
Manufacturers Hanover, Chase
Manhattan and Republic
National. For medium-sized
banks, the highest rating went to
Norstar Bank and Key Bank
received the lowest rating.
O' Cleireacain noted that
Bankers Trust scored poorly
because it is not a retail bank
and Key Bank has no New York
City branches, but is still vying
for New York City business.
The community banking
ratings account for ur to 10
percent of the overal score a
bank receives when it competes
to provide banking services to a
New York City agency. Without
submitting to a community-
banking rating, a bank is not
eligible to bid on any city
banking contract, which can
mean millions of dollars in
deposits.
The ratings are based on
information such as how many
branches a bank has in low
income neighbarhoods; the
number of mortgages and loons
they offer in low income areas;
the extent of bi-lingual services
they provide; and types of
banking services offered to
people on public assistance.
"For the first time the city is
taking advantage of its power
and it's identifying which banks
are really meeting community
needs," says Madeline Mar-
quez, a loon packager from the
East Harlem Community
Coolition for Fair Banking.
Jean Vernet, a community
reinvestment advocate at the
Community Service Society,
adds, "Hopefully this will
encourage banks to stay in low
income communities because
they know that if they want
access to city business they have
to work with communities. The
policy won't solve all the
problems but it's a step in the
right direction." 0 Usa Glazer
OIL UP
The drastic increase in the
cost of home heating oil is
taking its toll across the city and
a growing number of New
Yorkers are joining fuel
cooperatives as a way to beat
the price rises.
to city and state
consumer officials, the retail
price of home heating oil has
increased as much as 45
percent since the Middle East
crisis in August. Citing
figures from an October survey,
Consumer Affairs Commissioner
Mark Green says, ''This post-
invasion, pre-winter price of
$1 .45 a gallon is the highest
ever recorded in the city."
Lower income tenants
managing their own building
and nonprofit community-
based management groups
are already being squeezed.
"We're detinitely feeling it,"
says Evelyn Ortiz, assistant
director of Los Sures, a
community-based organization
that manages abaut 400 units
of low income housing in
Williamsburg. "It's getting
harder and harder to poy the
bills."
Susan wefald of the Urban
Homesteading Assistance
Board, which assists lower
income tenants manage their
own buildings, echoes this
concern. She says tenants
already struggling with tight
budgets are now expecting
additional costs of at least $15
per month per apartment.
Green and State Consumer
Protection Board Executive
Director Richard Kessel are
urging consumers to turn to fuel
cooperatives as way to cut
costs. New York City is home to
a number of fuel co-ops,
including the Housing Energy
Alliance for Tenants (HEAT), the
Flushing Fuel Consortium,
Consumer's Advantage HEAT,
Innovative Cooperative Enter-
prise-Heating Oil on Top and a
co-op run by the New York
Public Interest Research Group.
According to the October
survey, co-op prices can be as
mu.ch as 20 cents per gallon less
than prices from other heating
oil retailers. This can add up to
a savings of abaut $200 for a
household that uses 1,000
gallons of oil per season.
''The increased awareness of
oil prices has brought peaple to
check out the co-ops," says
Howard Levy, coordinator of the
co-op run by Innovative
Community Enterprise.
Cooperatives create their
discounts by purchasing and
delivering the oil in bulk and
then passing on the savings to
their members. The HEAT co-op
also offers its members energy
conservation services.
o Elizabeth von Nardroff
HOUSING BILL
LOST IN SPACE?
Congress recently passed the
nation's most sweeping federal
housing legislation in more than
a decade-but legislators failed
to put any money in the nation's
budget far some of the new
programs.
"We got most of what we
wanted," says Richard West
of the National Low Income
Housing Coalition, a
Washington-based advocacy
group, "except the money."
Ther.a are several important
features in the 600-page
legislation. An amalgamation of
three different housing bills
submitted to Congress over the
past year, the newly created
HOME program will provide
grants to states and municipali-
ties for the produCtion and
preservation of affordable
housing. These funds must be
targeted to housing for families
with incomes of 80 percent or
less of the area median. HOME
also provides that 15 percent of
funds granted to a local area
must go to the housing pro-
grams of community-based
nonprofits. Congress earmarked
more than $3 billion for HOME
in the legislation, but failed to
include any money for the
program in the final housing
budget.
The 1990 legislation also
enacts the HOPE initiative
championed by the Bush
administration. HOPE creates
three separate grant programs
for facilitating sale of public
housing and federally subsi-
dized proiects to residents.
Tenants who refuse to purchase
their apartments would be
eligible for federal Section 8
assistance, either to remain in
their apartments or to relocate.
Legislators pegged $1 billion for
In 1000.
13
12
11
10
NYC Homeless Family Count
(in Shelter System)
12,362
11,664

8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
o
o October 31, 1989
October 1, 1990
5,550
T_Pe.-sI.
-
* Includes adults in special residences
Source: NYC Human Resources Administration
the initiative in the housing act,
but failed to fund it in the
budget bill.
Additionally, the housing act
creates a complex process tor
potentially preserving affordable
units at projects where owners
want to prepay federally
subsidized mortgages. The
prepayment of these mortgages
ends the owners' requirement to
rent apartments to lower income
tenants.
Congress approved a
formula that will take into
account such factors as the
highest market-value use of a
property and the cost of
additional incentives to owners
to keep their projects affordable
to lower income tenants. Despite
this action, legislators limited the
federal obligation to preserve
units in high-cost areas like
New York, leading local
housing activists to warn that
many federally subsidized
projects here remain at risk. The
legislation also failed to address
the issue of owners who wish to
opt out of their Section 8
contracts.
Among the other provisions
in the 1990 housing act are a
substantial increase in the
development of new public
housing, reform of the Federal
Housing Administration
mortgage-insurance program
and the establishment of a trust
to provide low-cost financing for
first-time moderate-income
homebuyers.
While some housing activists
are hailing the 1990 legislation
as a milestone, others remain
skeptical. Chester Hartman, a
housing policy analyst with the
Institute for Policy Studies, says
despite the hype abaut the bill,
"It's a pygmy step." Hartman
notes that Congress failed to
provide funds tor many of the
new initiatives in the upcoming
fiscal year and increased actual
housing appropriations by just
$3.1 billion.
Some of the funds initially
earmarked for housing pro-
grams were literallr lost in
space. During fina negotiations
of the federal budget, Congress
redirected upwards of $1 billion
originally slated for housing to
NASA. 0 Dou. Turetsky
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1990/5
By Billy Allstetter
Uptown Inspiration
A tenacious advocate for housing and health care,
Thomas Granger cajoles, persists ... and inspires.
T
homas Granger thought con-
ditions at 544 W. 157th Street
would finally improve when
New York City took posession
of the apartment building. But the
city, swamped by a flood of building
seizures, turned out to be
little better than previous
owners against whom
Granger had organized two
rent strikes. Not only did
the city fail to make repairs,
but Granger believed offi-
cials were making unrealis-
tic demands on tenants
trying to manage their own
building.
"We said, 'To hell with
you, we ' ll go on strike
against you, too, '" says
Granger in his gravelly
voice. He chuckles, relish-
ing a battle from the 1970s.
But when a rent strike
didn' t get him what he
wanted, Granger took his
battle public. He borrowed
a campaign bus from State
Sen. Joseph Galiber and
drove it through the streets
of Washington Heights
broadcasting his message
over loudspeakers.
ation he has listened, cajoled, ex-
ploded, persisted or inspired people
to help him and themselves. The son
of a Methodist minister and a rural
schoolteacher, Granger has always
believed that the fair deal comes to
"You can fight City Hall,"
Granger told his neighbors,
and urged them to organize
their own rent strikes. Just
to make sure City Hall g9t
the message, he staged a
sit-in at former housing
commissioner William ThomasGranpr. "You can fight City Hall."
Eimicke's office.
"We were creating
enough noise, the city gave us an in-
terim lease. We instigated the [ten-
ant] interim lease program," says
Granger, referring to the program
where tenants in city-owned prop-
erty manage and eventually purchase
their buildings.
Mixing Strategies
But Thomas Granger knows how
to do more than make noise. In 20
years of fighting for better housing
and health care, he has mixed his
strategies; depending upon the situ-
6/DECEMBER 1990jCITY UMITS
people who help themselves. And
blessed with seemingly unlimited
energy, the 80-year-old former tran-
sit manager continues to plow ahead,
taking on any project that comes his
way.
"He's a real leader," says Jeanie
Dubnau, fellow board member of the
Riverside-Edgecome Neighborhood
Association (RENA). "He's charis-
matic, well organized, and well re-
spected by the tenants."
Meeting him and listening to him
talk, one would guess Thomas
Granger is closer to 50 than 80. The
force of life seems to run stronger in
some people, and he is one of them.
SolidI y built and light skinned for an
African-American, he wears a gold
lion pendant in honor of his astro-
logical sign, Leo. (He stands, spreads
his arms, and roars when asked what
a Leo is like.)
Long before his days of housing
and health care activism, Granger
spent almost 30 years desegregating
the Manhattan and Bronx Surface
Transportation Authority, a subsidi-
ary of the Metropolitan
Transit Authority. After be-
coming the first black bus
driver in the Transit Work-
ers Union, he moved to the
personnel department, a
member ofthe first group of
minorities promoted to
management.
"I was determined to turn
it from a lilly-white office
to an integrated office," says
Granger. He went into the
community, scouring his
own neighborhood for
promising young people. He
convinced a local delivery
boy to apply for a bus driv-
ing job that, years later, led
to a management position.
Sonia Maisonent, now a
manager for the Bronx Sur-
face transit, remembers how
he helped her get a second
shot at a typing test because
he had faith in her abilities
and her aspirations.
"He gave people oppor-
tunities," says Maisonent.
"He was an excellent [role]
o model. He was fair but he
~ was strong. He was kind of
~ like a strict father."
~ A warning sign hangs in
his home office-"Lack of
planning on your part
doesn't constitute an emer-
gency on my part. " In addition to
managing the tenants association out
of his office, he serves as a notary
public, tax accountant and phone
service for a contractor he convinced
to become his own boss.
Humorous Side
But the strict father has a humor-
ous side as well. The walls of his
office are covered with pictures of
animals in various stages of recline,
urging everyone to "Hang Loose" and
"Relax. " Favorite cartoons are
clipped and taped to the wall. He
answers the phone with a business-
like, "Granger," but frequently slips
into a friendly banter.
After almost 30 years with the
transit authority, including 12 as the
head of personnel, he retired on New
Year's Day 1976.
By then, however,
In 1979 he was encouraged to apply
for the Presbyterian Hospital Com-
munity Health Council, then form-
ing as a liaison between the commu-
nity and the hospital. At his inter-
view for the position, he stated
bluntly, "I got a gripe with this hos-
pital. I want to do
something to
search. "He makes it his business to
know more," says Farrow. "He will
make it his own [issue]."
his formerly
"beautiful neigh-
borhood" was
deteriorating and
being abandoned
by landlords. His
own building was
suffering at the
hands of an inat-
tentive owner ,
with the elevator,
heat and hot
water available
only intermit-
The force of life
improve the situ-
ation."
Inevitabl y, however, victories are
interspersed with bitter losses.
Granger mentions two people who
suffered heart attacks after fights
against landlords and city bureauc-
racy. After a moment of apparent
despair, he returns to his "can-do"
self. "The secret is don't keep that
tension inside, " says Granger. "Let
it out. Let it explode."
And he has.
seems to run
stronger in some
people, and
Thomas Granger
is one of them.
Today he proudl y
recites a list of
accomplish-
ments, including
shorter emer-
gency room wait-
ing time, a com-
mitment to one-
class care, on-staff
interpreters and a
And savor the personal rewards.
Boarding a bus recently, Granger was
recognized by the driver whom he
had hired many years before. The
man laughed while reminiscing about
the difficult taskmaster Granger had
been. Then he thanked Granger for
the prodding that kept him at the job
and allowed him to put two children
through college. More than 100
people from all facets of Granger's
life recently attended a surprise 80th
birthday party.
tently. With time
on his hands, and
a problem in front of him, he decided
to do something about it. He became
involved with RENA and organized
tenants into a rent strike against the
landlord. A second landlord bought
the building but proved no more inter-
ested in making repairs.
"He finally came here and sat in
this office and told me he was going
to milk this building and leave," says
Granger. The man offered Granger a
kickback if he would stop organizing
the tenants and let the building run
down. But Granger refused. "That
wasn't what I was out to do. If I was
that kind of person in personnel, I
could have been rich." Granger or-
ganized a second rent strike, and
later helped the tenants buy the
building from the city.
Broad Efforts
As tenants, community activists
and others recognized his ability to
inspire people and get things done,
they naturally came to him for help.
He broadened his efforts from his
own building to Washington Heights
to the rest of the city. While continu-
ing to be manager and treasurer of
his building, he became a board
member of RENA, the Metropolitan
Council on Housing, the Urban
Homesteading Assistance Board
(UHAB) and was a founding board
member of the Self-Help Works
Consumer Cooperative, which offers
members use of a credit union as
well as low-cost insurance, legal and
architectural services.
Medicaid office
for out-patients.
The council re-
cently rewrote its bylaws, allowing
him to remain as chairman.
"He's an honest and fair gentle-
man who represents his community
actively and aggressively yet he
understands the restraints on the
medical community," says Thomas
Q. Morris, president of Columbia-
Presbyterian Hospital. "He's a vigor-
ous proponent for those people and
issues he believes in."
While he is a powerful advocate
for several groups, he refuses to be
their dogmatic mouthpiece, adds Lee
Farrow, UHAB' s director of coopera-
tive management services. Someone
may brief him on an issue, but he
usually adds to that with his own re-
"I get my paybacks." he says. 0
Billy Allstetter is a freelance writer
living in New York.
How To Win Friends
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Call or write Sue Fox
710 WEST END AVENUE
New YORK, N.Y. 10025
(212) 222-9946
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1990/7
IS NEW YORK'S TRANSIT
OFF T CK?
The Transit Authority depicts its subways and buses
as a rolling melting pot. Service cuts are diluting the brew.
BY MARGARET MITTELBACH
O
n a typical Thursday night, it's standing-room-
only on the gleaming new silver cars of the #2
train coming into Manhattan from the Bronx.
Air-conditioned and grafitti-free, it comes to a
smooth stop-and sits there, right in the middle
of the dark tube between stations. As the unexplained
delay lengthens from five minutes to 15 minutes, a
young man growls a sentiment that starts a dozen heads
nodding grimly: "If I see one of those, we're-coming-
back-so-you-come-back signs, I'm going to tear it down
and rip it apart."
If subway officials thought they could endear them-
selves to riders with their current $2.1 million advertis-
ing campaign, "The Subway. We're Coming Back. So
You Come Back," they should have thought again.
Despite the much-touted improvements to the city's
431 miles of subway tracks, the 1,775 new subway cars
and the expensive advertising campaigns designed to
attract upscale riders, the total number of fares collected
in 1990 is down six percent compared to 1989. And
while transportation officials blame fare-beating and the
slump in the economy for this unexpected downturn,
subway critics have a simpler answer: Riders are fed up
with service that has not improved as much as the city's
Transit Authority (T A) would like them to believe, that
costs commuters 15 percent more than last year and that
gets even worse the farther they get from Wall Street and
City Hall.
Although T A officials like to depict the subway as
egalitarian, a moving melting pot that serves rich and
poor alike, in fact, as the TA faces a deepening financial
crisis, transportation critics suspect it will be the people
who rely on public transportation the most-lower in-
come, long-distance commuters-who will feel the brunt
of the cutbacks. "At the Transit Authority," says Joe
Rappaport ofthe Straphangers Campaign, "the customer
always comes last."
Service Cuts
With a $100 million deficit this year and an estimated
$200 million deficit for 1991, the TA has already carved
back rush-hour and late-night service on numerous sub-
S/DECEMBER 1990/CITY UMITS
way lines, including the A, B, F, J, Q and R, all lines on
which service is already considered inadequate. Worse,
unless the financial situation at the Transit Authority
drastically improves, bus and subway riders can expect
more service cuts, another fare hike by the end of 1991
and the possibility of station closings.
Transit Authority officials admit such cutbacks are
possible, but they insist cuts will not unfairly affect any
particular group or neighborhood. "When we look to cut
service, we're not doing it for any other reason but to
balance the budget ," says Bob Previdi, a TA spokesper-
son. "Decisions are based on the level of ridership. We're
not out to screw anybody."
Such ridership-based judgments can be something of
a self-fulfilling prophecy. Deny a station regular mainte-
nance, cut back service on a subway line or bus route and
you're bound to lose ridership. Then the T A can sharpen
its budget ax, which never seems to fall on areas like the
Upper East Side.
One example of where it may fall is the Franklin
Avenue shuttle, a historic five-stop transportation link
running through Bedford -Stuyvesant and Crown Heights,
connecting the A and C to the IRT to the D and Q. While
the T A has literally spent billions of dollars rehabilitat-
ing other lines, it recently approved a $1.7 million
contract to conduct a study that will consider the com-
plete demolition of the Franklin Avenue line. The shuttle
and its station stops have been left to go to seed.
In fact, the Franklin A venue shuttle-the one subway
line that does not run through a single affluent neighbor-
hood-is also the only line that has been completely
neglected by the T A's station improvement program.
While other stations have been cleansed of graffiti, re-
painted or completely rebuilt with an eye towards pro-
tecting their historic details, the shuttle stops remain
uninviting and vandal-scarred, unscheduled for even
the most basic improvements.
"No doubt some stations are getting the goods and
some aren't," says Rappaport. "The TA would argue that
they're being scientific about it, but that science means
poor people are the ones who suffer."
Transit Authority officials would like riders to be-
lieve that all communities served by the subway have
benefited equally from the massive, on-going $10 billion
, ....
Losing Patience: The total number of fares collected in 1990 is down six percent compared to 1989.
capital improvement program. They assert that since the
widely hailed new cars-the most obvious element of
the subway improvements-pass through rich and poor
neighborhoods alike, the program's money is distrib-
uted to different areas of the city without bias.
But anyone who rides the subways any distance into
the Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens knows it just isn't so.
While the people at the Franklin Street stop in TriBeCa
enjoy the benefits of newly laid, peach-colored terrazzo
tiling, passengers at Beverley Road in Flatbush during
the afternoon rush must wait in line for more than five
minutes just to get off the platform. Despite a population
explosion in the area, there is still only one lone turnstile
through which hundreds of passengers must exit.
Perhaps it is imbalances such as these that have led
some riders to abandon the subway and the TA's fiscal
woes. As one Brooklyn transportation advocate puts it,
"People out here just don't trust the T A anymore."
Manhattan Bias
A look at the TA's own data on the progress of the
station restorations program shows not only serious fi-
nancial disarray but a strong bias toward Manhattan
station projects. Even in terms of the most basic station
maintenance-repainting, removing grafitti-progress
has lagged far behind in the outer boroughs.
Specifically, while 41 percent ofthe stations in Man-
hattan have been either upgraded, restored, modernized
or slated for such improvements, only 28 percent of the
stations in Queens, 24 percent in Brooklyn and 18
percent in the Bronx have been awarded similar treat-
ment.
Further, while every single one ofthe 146 stations in
Manhattan have been scheduled for an improved clean-
ing program, only 72 percent of the stations in the Bronx,
60 percent in Brooklyn and 56 percent in Queens have
been deemed worthy of similar efforts.
While T A officials admit the station improvement
program has focused its attention predominantly on
Manhattan, they contend the improvements have been
allotted fairly. "We try to figure where we can get the
most bang for our buck. Eighty-five percent of our riders
start or end their trips between 86th Street and the
Battery, river to river. These stations are also the most
beat up," says the T A's Previdi. "Critics of the T A don't
take into account that we're a public agency and we only
have so much money. We're not playing favorites here."
But critics contend that anecdotal evidence of station
neglect in the outer boroughs belies the T A's approach.
The most glaring example: the continued closure of the
Intervale Station in the South Bronx.
Last March, subway bandits torched the token booth
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1990/9
at the Intervale stop, and the resulting conflagration
damaged the elevated station so badly that it had to be
closed. Rather than making a commitment to quickly
repair the station, which sits on the heavily used #2 and
#5 subway lines, the TA came out with a widely suspect
plan t h a ~ would have kept the station closed for five
years and cost more per square foot to reconstruct than
it cost to build Trump Tower.
Only after intense community pressure was brought
to bear did the T A agree to revise its plan, promising to
complete the restoration within two-and-a-half years at
the significantly lower cost of $3.9 million.
Meanwhile, the TA has managed to authorize spend-
ing $417 million out ofits five-year capital budget and
$55.5 million out of its 1990 operating budget on pre-
dominantly cosmetic improvements to other stations.
Similarly, at the Nevins Street station, a major trans-
fer point on the 2, 3, 4 and 5 lines in downtown Brooklyn,
maintenance has been so poor and poorly planned that
the ceiling over the station' s mezzanine was on the verge
of collapsing in September. Because the situation re-
quired emergency repairs and the closing of the two
traffic lanes overhead on Flatbush Avenue, the TA rec-
ommended closing the Nevins stop for a year-and-a-
half-even though the station handles 15,000 to 20,000
passengers per day. Again, community pressure was
needed to convince the T A to only close one track at a
time.
"We almost had Flatbush
A venue down on the subway
tracks," says Pat Smith, a
spokesman for Brooklyn Bor-
ough President Howard
Golden. "In a report we pre-
sented in February, we told
the TA that the Nevins sta-
tion had such severe physi-
cal problems that it posed an
imminent threat to the
station's survival. But they
kept putting it off. This was a
classic case of crisis manage-
ment."
Wall Street to Macy's
fewer are happy paying the new $1.15 fare.
How the T A will deal with the current fiscal crisis is
still unclear. But a look at how they have allotted money
in the past does not bode well for commuters in lower
income neighborhoods.
During recent years, the Transit Authority has adopted
the Orwellian slogan: "Less Is More." The idea is that
fewer people, fewer buses and fewer trains can actually
provide better service. Although in some cases this may
be true-via better scheduling and better management-
more often than not , less is exactly what it sounds like.
This is most glaringly true in the case of the city's all-
too-forgotten bus fleet. In revising the routes and cutting
back on the number of bus drivers, the T A has succeeded
not in streamlining service but in simply eliminating 10
percent of the city's buses. Many of the buses served
neighborhoods in the outer boroughs that the subway
does not reach, such as Soundview in the Bronx, south-
western Queens and East Flatbush in Brooklyn.
Although the T A claims to have improved bus serv-
ice, riders and transportation analysts say service has
steadily declined in quality since the capital improve-
ments program went into effect. Today, buses may be
newer and cleaner than they were five years ago, but they
are also more crowded and fewer and farther between.
"The community'S saying there is no way they should
ride like cattle," says Lee Brown, the Brooklyn commu-
The Transit Authority sees
nothing misguided about its
Manhattan-centric ads such
as "Wall Street to Macy's. 7
Minutes" or its self-promot-
ing spots on television fea-
turing two elderly women
discussing why riders
shouldn't really mind put-
ting up with delays caused
by track work. With every-
thing that goes on in the sub-
ways-shootings, stabbings,
muggings, not to mention
Manhattan Bias: This Franklin Street station in TriBeCa has peach-colored terrazzo tiling. The Franklin
Avenue station in Crown Heights remains uninviting and vandal-scarred.
major delays-the TA's ads have been likened to adver-
tisements for sour milk. No one's buying.
In spite of the shiny new trains, highly publicized ef-
forts to boot the homeless out of subway cars and sta-
tions and fancy renovations of selected Manhattan sta-
tions, a lot fewer New Yorkers are happy riding. Even
10jDECEMBER 1990jCITY UMITS
nity liaison to the Transit Workers Union. "That's why
they're taking alternative transportation."
Although the T A regularly rates and reports the on-
time performance of its subway lines, the agency has
never gone on the record with on-time performance for
any of its 200-odd bus lines. Recent reports from the
\

J
~
..
since so many people ride
the vans it looks like we've
got less ridership than we
actually do. That means less
service. It's a vicious cycle."
To make matters worse,
in communities that must
rely on sometimes irregular
bus service to take commut-
ers to the subways, riders
must pay twice since there is
no free transfer between the
bus and subway systems.
Rather than working to elimi-
nate what are known as
"double-fare zones," the TA
has recently created more of
them: In January, the TA
eliminated free bus-to-sub-
way transfers at eight of 10
~ stations where they had pre-
~ viously been available, cit-
15 ing fraud and abuse of the
~ paper transfers as the reason.
=:; Although the T A has ef-
~ fectively eliminated fare
~ abuse at these eight outer
borough transfer points,
Joe Rappaport, straphangers Campaign: "Poor people are the ones who suffer."
commuters on these lines
were each forced to pay an
estimated $575 more just to
MT A's Inspector General's office, however, paint a bleak
picture of the bus system's reliability.
Reviewing the quality of midday service for selected
bus lines in Brooklyn, the Inspector General found
service to "of poor quality overall" with "high levels of
service irregularity." Similarly, in a report on midday
service for selected lines in the Bronx, the report noted
that on some lines, irregular service led to a high number
of overcrowded buses, with half-hour-long waits at bus
stops not unusual, even on the most heavily traveled
lines.
Real Time
The T A has also found some creative ways for making
its buses appear to run on schedule. For example, when
on-time performance proved poor for the Bx30 busline
in the Bronx (taking passengers from subway-less Co-op
City to the 205th Street IND terminal), the T A simply
increased the official "headway" -the term used for the
time passengers are expected to wait between buses .
Rather than increase service, they increased the official
waiting time between buses from 16 minutes to 20
minutes. Magically, the bus isn't "late" anymore.
Marooned would-be bus riders in many areas of the
city not served by the subway now have the option of
riding illegal, uninsured gypsy vans that crowd city bus
stops and, incidentally, still charge only a dollar. Transit
advocates, however, say that the vans will only cause
bigger headaches for commuters as the TA contemplates
more service cuts.
"The gypsy vans are there because bus service is
poor," says Desiree Cumberbatch, chair of Brooklyn
Community Board 17's Transportation Committee.
"Unfortunately, bus service is based on ridership. And
get to work this year.
While the Transit Authority is quick to hike costs to
commuters or cut services, many transit-watchers advo-
cate that T A officials try taking a bite out of their own
hides. According to a report on T A staffing produced by
State Sen. Franz Leichter, between 1984 and 1989, the
number of vice-presidents within the T A rose from 28 to
63, the number of managers making more than $100,000
a year rose from 7 to 25, and the number of managers
making more than $50,000 a year rose from 108 to 2,500.
Despite this dramatic growth in management, service
failed to impr0ve. Overall on-time performance for the
subway system (based on the T A's own internal, unpub-
lished time schedules) actually fell from 83 percent in
June 1984 to 81 percent in June 1989. Similarly, the
number of trains taken out of service in 1985 averaged
159 per day, and by May 1989 the daily average was still
158 per day.
As for the bus system, improvements are even more
illusory. Despite increased levels of managerial staffing
and hundreds of new buses provided through the capital
improvement program, New York City still has one of
the worst bus fleets in the country, with New York City
buses more likely to break down than the buses in any of
15 major cities that Leichter's office surveyed.
Despite limping buses, increased fares and reduced
services, the T A never needed to woo the work-a-day
commuters from neighborhoods like Sunset Park or
Marble Hill with a we're-coming-back-so-you-come-back
ad campaign. These commuters couldn't afford to hail a
cab or a limo instead of taking the IRT. Ironically, it's
these very same riders who may need to launch their
own campaign to bring the Transit Authority back to
them. 0
CITY UMnS/DECEMBER 1990/11
Questionable Benefits
Welfare is now a contract-many single mothers will have to work or train to
receive their welfare check. Will they benefit from the changes?
Eva Feliciano: "Every day is a battle. "
BY MARY KEEFE
E
va Feliciano sits with 23 other women in a class using newspapers to
build reading comprehension and vocabulary. When she's asked
about herself, she leans back, her face lights up and she tells a difficult
story with a surprising lack of bitterness. Speaking in a calm, direct
manner, the tall, dark-haired 26-year-old describes the last three years of
her life: how her marriage broke up, how she applied for welfare, lived with
relatives when she couldn't afford an apartment and then became homeless,
living with her three young children at the Prince George Hotel for nearly
a year.
12/DECEMBER 1990/CITY UMITS
Life has improved somewhat since
then. Now the family has an apart-
ment in Washington Heights, the
children are enrolled in city-run day
care and Feliciano has volunteered
to participate in a comprehensive
job-training program. She wants to
work at a job where she can make
enough money so she and her kids
don't risk being homeless again. "You
are anxious to do so many things but
you don't know where to begin," she
says. "You just have to take one step
at a time."
Feliciano is one of thousands of
welfare recipients who are now
working or training as part of welfare
reform, and every step ofthe transi-
tion is difficult. In Feliciano's case,
the demands can be overwhelming:
parenting three children under the
age of six, living on an income well
below the poverty level, dealing with
the constant demands of the welfare
bureaucracy and trying to catch up
with a basic education. "I try to keep
a positive side up but it is a hard fight
to keep going," she notes. "Every
day is a battle."
Welfare reform is now underway
across the country and Feliciano isn't
the only person battling to keep up
with the program. Under the old sys-
tem, unemployed single women with
children were automaticall y entitled
to government assistance. Now many
of these women will have to prove
~ that they're deserving by putting in
ffi 20 hours a week in job preparation,
it! vocational education or work pro-
grams-and if they fail to meet this
stipulation, they risk losing their
benefits.
In this brave new world, welfare is
seen as a contract: government pro-
vides training, child care and wel-
fare money and poor women are
expected to participate in training
programs and then move on to jobs
and out of poverty.
Holes in the Contract
Unfortunately, there are some
sizable holes in the "contract." Less
than half of the city's welfare mothers have a high school
degree, but job training and education programs are
being funded from austerity budgets, and most will
provide only superficial assistance. Once women receive
training, they're entering an extremely tight job market.
The few who do land a job are hardly rewarded: the mini-
mum wage rarely covers the rent in New York City and
welfare reform only provides much-
needed child care and Medicaid for
participate or are assigned to the program. In New York
City, women with children under the age of six are
excluded from mandatory participation in the program,
but this will soon be changed and only women with
children under the age of three will be excluded. About
270,000 New Yorkers receive AFDC and within five
years, 20 percent of all eligible recipients are expected to
take part.
The road towards welfare reform
up to a year after someone gets a job.
"It's a contract I would never sign
and no lawyer would ever recom-
mend," says Mimi Abramovitz, a
professor of social work at Hunter
College and the author of "Regulating
the Lives of Women," a book about
welfare.
"Welfare reform
has been lengthy and marked by ideo-
logical battles. Passed during the
twilight months of the Reagan ad-
ministration, the Family Support Act
of 1988 requires states to change the
way welfare works in an attempt to
encourage self-sufficiency. The fed-
erallaw sets the broad outline of the
new system, leaving the details to
individual states. In the New York
State legislature, politicians wrangled
for 18 months before finally passing a
bill last July.
does not address
the fundamental
No matter how hard individual
women like Eva Feliciano try to trans-
form their lives, broader realities will
limit their progress. Welfare rights
advocates say that the majority of
welfare reform participants are likely
to remain on the welfare rolls, end-
problem, which is
that grant levels
are way too low."
In New York City, the Human Re-
sources Administration (HRA) is
overseeing most ofthe changes under
a program known as BEGIN, which stands for Begin Em-
ployment/Gain Independence. All told, federal, state
and local governments have provided HRA with a mere
$15 million for the implementation of BEGIN. The
agency has run a number of welfare-to-work programs in
recent years, but none on the same scale as BEGIN.
lessly repeating training, work or job
search programs so they can keep receiving benefits.
And women who get jobs may lose them once their child
care and Medicaid is taken away. "When women end up
back on welfare, the women will be blamed," says
Abramovitz. "It acts as a kind of a set-up."
"I resent that we call this welfare reform," adds Liz
Krueger, a welfare advocate for the Community Food
and Resource Center. "We took a system of income
support that wasn't working and we put a bunch of
layers on top it. It's just another layer of bureaucratic
requirements. "
Timothy Casey from the Center for Law and Social
Policy adds that for all the hullabaloo surrounding the
changes, the most important revisions have been over-
looked. "Welfare reform does not address the fundamen-
tal problem, which is that grant levels are way too low,
way below the poverty level," he says. "The cash grant
alone is 65 percent of poverty level. Over the last 10 or
15 years, there's been roughly a 30 to 35 percent reduc-
tion in the [total] welfare grant."
Casey argues that welfare reform doesn't change the
current system in any kind of dramatic way and the
status quo will basically remain. "I think many people
have been misled into believing that the new work
program rules are going to have a dramatic impact on the
size of the welfare rolls," he says. "Based on all the
available studies that is not going to happen. Even if one
makes the most optimistic assumptions, we are talking
about modest changes. Already we don't guarantee a job
to all those who want one, and we don't guarantee a
living income to those who get one. You're out there
working and still taking care of your kid, doing all this
stuff and you still end up poor. You're working two part-
time jobs and you still end up poor. That makes no
sense."
Who Is Affected
The government's main welfare grant is Aid to Fami-
lies with Dependent Children (AFDC) and welfare re-
form will affect all AFDC recipients who volunteer to
Changing Attitudes
The changes mandated by welfare reform are the
result of a gradual shift in the nation's attitude towards
the poor. Forcing welfare recipients to work or train in
order to receive benefits implies an acceptance of the
notion that poverty is the result of an individuals'
failings and those individuals must "prove themselves"
before being deemed worthy of assistance. This ap-
proach ignores the larger workings of an economic sys-
tem that demands a large group of unemployed or under-
employed people as a buffer against increased wage
demands from employed workers. It also assumes that
the economic system treats all individuals equally, re-
gardless oftheir gender, race or class. But this assump-
tion is challenged by the facts: 97 percent of AFDC
recipients are women, and in New York, the overwhelm-
ing majority are black and Latino. Additionally, many
women and people of color have historically been rele-
gated to jobs with poverty-level wages.
In the 1960s, there was a brief surge of welfare-rights
activism, with women on welfare demanding increased
benefits and better services. But most of the debate about
welfare in the past decade has been framed by conserva-
tive ideologues and liberal social service providers who
advocate on behalf of the poor. Without direct input
from women on welfare, the framework ofthe debate has
been extremely limited.
"A lot of people who didn't know about welfare have
been making social welfare policy," says Theresa Funi-
ciello, a former welfare recipient who is co-director of
Social Agenda, a private consulting agency. Pointing
much ofthe blame for welfare reform's failings at social-
service providers, she adds, "In my view, recipients
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1990/13
were sabotaged by
the institutions
that were sup-
posed to serve
their interests.
Social-service
providers never
framed the debate
around there not
being enough
money in welfare
[payments]. For
them, the question
was how much
money there
would be in the
social welfare
pot." She contin-
ues, "These work
programs don't
produce jobs and
money for welfare
recipients-but
they do produce
money for institu-
tions. And they
Back to School: Welfare recipients at a comprehensive training program run by the Federation
Employment and Guidance Services. Only the lucky few get to attend such programs.
welfare reform
and to encourage
recipients to vol-
untarily take part.
But to meet the
federally man-
dated levels of
participation,
thousands of
women will be
forced to join each
year. In the first
year alone, 53,000
welfare recipients
will be sent letters
informing them
that they're obli-
gated to partici-
pate in the reform
program. (HRA of-
ficials admit that
only about a third
of these women
may actually wind
up joining BE-
produce another layer ofthe bureaucracy that can lobby
for it's own continuation."
Crippling Limitations
Despite these crippling limitations, welfare reform
may actually improve some women's lives if the city
provides decent day care, a few good training programs
and if the administrative changes are handled without
severe punitive measures being taken. The extent to
which this occurs is mostly up to HRA. The overbur-
dened agency runs the city's shelter system, foster care
and numerous other services and does not have a repu-
tation for efficiency or compassion. But new commis-
sioner Barbara Sabol inspires a degree of optimism:
Advocates say she's open to suggestions, aware of the
problems that plague welfare reform and sympathetic to
the plight of the poor. Still, a ready ear and an open mind
may not be enough to implement the raft of changes de-
manded by welfare reform.
Catherine Zall, who heads HRA's Office of Employ-
ment Services (DES), is responsible for overseeing much
of BEGIN. She's an upbeat, take-charge former manage-
ment consultant for Arthur Young and Co. who likes to
minimize complications and focus on possibilities. "The
important years are now as we develop the programs,"
she says. "If we're not careful we will lose the opportu-
nity."
Despite this enthusiastic approach, welfare reform is
already set up as a numbers game where the city is
consumed by the need to meet federal requirements-or
lose federal funds. By the end of the first year, seven
percent of those eligible must be putting in their 20
hours a week and by 1994 federal rules require 20
percent of those eligible to be participating. Zall estimates
that a full 60 percent of those eligible will be swept
through the system to reach that rate. If the city falls
behind, federal funding for AFDC, which comprises
three-fifths of the state's welfare grant, will be cut.
The city has pledged to do extensive outreach about
14jDECEMBER 1990jCrTY UMITS
GIN.) With so
many people being called in, huge amounts of money
will be spent just to process and keep track of the pro-
gram participants.
And while massive implementation of welfare reform
may look good on paper, it's bound to create confusion
at the ground level. Welfare is administered through 39
site offices staffed by thousands of caseworkers-each
with an average of 160 cases. BEGIN participants will
have to keep reporting to their regular caseworkers and
also visit newly created BEGIN centers. At the BEGIN
centers they'll file applications for training-related
expenses like carfare and lunch and also list requests for
money for day care. But so far there are only four BEGIN
centers in the city-two in the Bronx and two in
Manhattan-and only three more are in the pipeline.
BEGIN employees may be just as overworked as the
agency's welfare caseworkers.
In the past two decades, administrative changes in the
welfare system have led to large numbers of people being
cut from the welfare rolls, a process commonly known as
churning. Some advocates are fearful that requiring wel-
fare recipients to participate in BEGIN may just be
another way to trip them up and cut them from the rolls
when they fail to turn up for training.
But HRA officials say the agency is committed to
reducing the number of famillies churned from the wel-
fare rolls by 75 percent and a new process for mediating
disputes is now being implemented. If it works it will be
a stark reversal of Koch-era policies where welfare-to-
work programs often saved more money by cutting off
benefits than by putting people to work.
Troubling Questions
Even if HRA manages to reduce the bureaucratic
hassles imposed by welfare reform, troubling questions
remain about the job training and education portion of
the effort. After a decade of drastic reductions, many of
(continued on page 16.)
Case in Point:
Williamsburg Court
This 59 unit low income housing develop-
ment, sponsored by the St. Nicholas
Neighborhood Preservation Corporation,
is located in Brooklyn's Williamsburg
section.
They needed $300,000 to complete
their $7 million plus financing package.
Could Brooklyn Union's Area Develop-
ment Fund help?
Sure we could-with a little help from
our friends, the Low Income Housing
Fund and Bankers Trust Company. They
each pledged $100,000 to match
Brooklyn Union's investment.
We've found that the Area Develop-
ment Fund is a working blueprint for
change in the economic and social life
of New York. If your company would
like to help as has Pfizer, Bankers Trust
Company and so many others, talk to
Jan Childress at (718) 403-2583. You'll
find Him working for stronger New York
at Brooklyn Union Gas, naturally.,
I Union Gas,
Naturally
(continued from page 14.)
these programs are underfunded, understaffed and strug-
gling to meet the demands of an extremely needy popu-
lation.
Advocates and policy analysts seem to agree that
comprehensive programs that provide a range of coun-
seling, training and follow-up services under one um-
brella are the best way to meet the needs of women with
limited educational backgrounds. But these programs
are also the most expensive to run-and they're ex-
tremely scarce.
From the very beginning, the training and education
process appears to be woefully inadequate. A woman on
welfare who has had little experience in the work world
may have only a limited idea of what employable skills
she has. The BEGIN process probably won't help her
find out: Only 12 percent of BEGIN participants will go
through in-depth career planning; the rest will have a
group orientation session, a brief personal interview and
be sent on their way.
To meet the requirement of 20 hours of work or train-
ing per week, women can head in two main directions-
they can take part in programs run by the Human Re-
sources Administration or they can try to find programs
on their own, either through the city's Department of
Employment (DOE), through the Board of Education's
adult learning programs or through one of numerous of
private, nonprofit or for-profit programs.
In the next year, HRA estimates that about 13,000
women will be assigned to programs run within the
agency. These programs include English-language and
literacy classes, a work-study set-up where participants
combine work experience and job-search training, and a
program called Job Club, which provides motivational
and work skills training combined with an actual job
hunt. None ofthese programs have a dazzling track rec-
ord for leading people to jobs. The Job Clubs are a
relative success story, but even there only 71 percent of
those enrolled actually finished and only 38 percent of
those that completed the program managed to find jobs
that averaged $6 dollars an hour-a wage that won't lift
most families above the poverty line. Only two-thirds of
those who found work kept their jobs for longer than a
month.
Another 15,000 women are expected to enter pro-
grams on their own-and those who finish HRA pro-
grams and don't have a job will depend on training and
education programs outside the agency to fill their 20
hours a week. There are large numbers of literacy,
language, job training and education programs in the
city, but on the whole they are isolated and are strug-
gling to provide the kind of comprehensive training
required by the most needy.
Feeling the Pressure
The city's Department of Employment is an obvious
place for welfare reform participants to look for training
programs, but DOE is feeling the pressure of poorly edu-
cated students and a scarce supply of jobs. Much of the
money for DOE training programs comes from the fed-
eral government, through the Job Training and Partner-
ship Act OTPA), which funds Testing and Placement
(TAP) centers and short-term training programs at 40
community-based organizations. In recent years , JTPA
16/DECEMBER 1990/CITY UMns
programs have been criticized for "creaming" the best
students to meet federal requirements for job placement,
but in the past year there's been a policy shift and the
state now requires public assistance recipients to make
up 40 percent of those in the programs.
Because of these changes, about 1,600 of the 4,000
people in DOE adult job-training programs this year will
be public assistance recipients. And according to DOE's
own estimates, only 39.4 percent of the welfare recipi-
ents who finish training programs will have jobs 13
weeks later, and they will earn an average of just $224 a
week.
TAP centers, which serve more than 20,000 people
per year, are under even more pressure. The centers are
a quick stop-they only provide brief interviews, infor-
mation about jobs and referrals to training programs-
but with welfare reform they will be expected to do more
in-depth assessment and serve a more disadvantaged
population, all with the same or even smaller budget, ac-
cording to Nora Wang, DOE's coordinator of adult pro-
grams.
"What has happened agencywide is that the popula-
tion we serve is needier and needier," surmises Julie
Erickson, assistant commissioner at DOE. "That has
made it very difficult for us to ... train people and get
them jobs." What's needed, she says, is a broader range
of services and more counseling as part of training
programs. But most DOE programs are in small organiza-
tions without those resources and-once again-there is
no money for expansion.
Ironically, state legislators have sabotaged the chances
of some of the welfare recipients with the most potential
for success. College degrees do get people off welfare. Of
158 surveyed AFDC welfare recipients who finished
two- and four-year colleges in New York, 89 percent
have been employed since graduation and 87 percent are
off welfare, according to a March 1990 study by Marilyn
Gittell , director of the Howard Samuels State Manage-
ment and Policy Center at the City University of New
York (CUNY) Graduate Center. There are about 5,000
AFDC recipients studying at schools within the CUNY
system, and it would seem like good policy to support
them. But state legislators decided otherwise. Those
who want to attend four-year colleges won't be eligible
for child care and other expenses-nor will those in two-
year programs that focus on liberal arts or pre-professional
studies.
Flawed Framework
In the final analysis, New York City's implementation
of welfare reform amounts to an attempt to make the best
of a bad situation. As Krueger puts it, "When I think
about the broader picture, I say we're starting off with
seriously flawed federal legislation. It makes the wrong
assumptions about why people are poor and who poor
people are. It doesn't look at the labor market, it doesn't
address the minimum wage or required health benefits .. .it
doesn't look at the issues broadly enough and it draws on
the myth that people don't want to work."
Still, she adds, "There are some good things that
could come out ofthis. If New York City does this right
they can say we didn't hurt anybody in the process. And
they can start some smaller pilot projects that could
work. .. but they have to stretch the rules because they're
not good rules." D
v
By David Hatchett
Minding the Store
Blacks still don't have a cut of the city's business pie.
O
n Church Avenue in Flatbush,
African Americans have led a
much-publicized boycott
against two Korean-owned gro-
cery stores. The boycott is about al-
leged mistreatment of black shoppers
by the stores' owners. But for many
African Americans, the boycott begs
the telling of another
story: the decades-old
question of why Afri-
can Americans don't
own more of the busi-
nesses in their neigh-
borhoods.
store in Bedford Stuyvesant, says
African-American shopkeepers often
face a number of hurdles. Because
their stores are commonly in neigh-
borhoods labeled high risk, where fires
and robberies occur more frequently
than other areas, wholesale distribu-
tors are reluctant to accept checks or
lend to black businesses because of
racism and conservati ve lending prac-
tices," says Lawrence King, program
director of the West Harlem Commu-
nity Organization.
Still, African Americans are not
the only group to face racism. Cubans,
Vietnamese and Chinese are among
those who have been able to over-
come obstacles similar to those faced
by black entrepreneurs and establish
relati vely strong community business
infrastructures.
New York City's 1.7 million Afri-
can Americans operated 25,256 busi-
nesses in 1987, accord-
ing to a recent U.S. De-
partment of Commerce
survey. The city's
Korean population,
which numbers just
200,000 to 300,000,
runs some 10,000 busi-
nesses, according to
B.J. Sa, secretary gen-
eral of the Korean As-
sociation of New York.
SuNam, former pres i-
dent of the Korean-
American Business As-
sociation, says the
Korean formula for suc-
(j) cess is simple. Kore-
~ ans come to the United
:3 States, work at menial
jobs and save every-
g thing they earn, often
Long before the civil
rights legislation ofthe
1960s, African Ameri-
cans made inroads into
the city's business com-
munity. "Blacks at one
time owned lots of
business in New York
City," says Walter Staf-
ford, an urban planning
professor at New York
University. In the 17th
and 18th centuries,
Stafford points out,
African Americans
dominated the city's
catering business. Just
a small part of New
York City's population
'--_--'...=-'----':.......:.c.::::.;:..:...:....:.._---.:.-'---''--____________ --.Jg owning no other
Black Entet1Jrise: Will the next generation have a shot at owning a shop?
clothes than the blue
jeans they wear to
work. After several
in 1840, blacks owned a dry cleaning
firm, two dry good stores, a confec-
tionery, two coal yards and two of the
better restaurants in the Manhattan
financial district. African Americans
owned real estate valued at $835,000
in 1853.
Despite the end of slavery in 1865,
a host of legal and social barriers
blocked the continued development
of black businesses. In "How Capital-
ism Underdeveloped Black America,"
Dr. Manning Marable writes that white
bankers were reluctant to make loans
to African Americans and insurance
companies often refused to cover
black-owned businesses. Black busi-
ness owners were also often prohib-
ited from suing creditors in the courts.
Hurdles
Many of the same institutional
barriers remain today. Jitu Weusi, a
black activist who owns a health food
extend credit, says Weusi. He also
says that utility companies frequently
demand large cash deposits from
businesses opening in predominantly
black neighborhoods.
But perhaps the biggest hurdle is
simply the access to capital. A June
1988 study of 203 small businesses in
New York City by Interface, an inde-
pendent research organization, found
that private lenders approved a much
greater percentage ofthe loan applica-
tions from white business owners than
from minority-owned firms. David
Gallagher of Interface says this is in
part because banks generally want
physical assets that can be secured
against the loan in case of default.
Minority-owned businesses are often
service or retail firms with few such
assets.
But these practical concerns may
mask other reasons for denying capi-
tal to blacks. "Banks will often not
years a family will pool its savings,
along with $1,000 contributions from
a circle ofrelatives and friends, to pull
together the $30,000 or so needed to
start a small business, says Nam.
But some experts say the Korean
model of business success won't work
for African Americans for a number of
reasons. Foremost, says Belozi Har-
vey, executive director of the Third
World Trade Institute in Harlem,
African Americans cannot match the
financial or educational clout of many
of the new immigrants. In 1911,fewer
than two percent of the newly arriv-
ing immigrants to the United States
claimed to have managerial or techni-
cal skills, against 32 percent of those
arriving in 1986. One-third of the
Asians in the United States have col-
lege degrees, against only 17 percent
of whites and a much smaller percent-
age of blacks. And recent changes in
U.S. immigration policies are de-
CITY UMnS/DECEMBER 1990/17
signed to specifically bring more
wealthy and highly skilled foreigners
to our shores.
Market Matters
But one of the biggest barriers of all
may be one of the most basic of busi-
ness issues: defining a market. A 1988
National Priorities Report by the Na-
tional Urban League notes that many
of the businesses newly arriving
immigrants establish are specifically
targeted toward providing food, cloth-
ing, education and counseling serv-
ices for their own communities. These
include travel agencies, which spe-
cialize in arranging travel accommo-
dations back to their home countries;
Hispanic grocery stores that stock food
products consumed primarily in
Central and South American coun-
tries; and Asian-American food and
clothing stores.
Outside a small range of hair-care
products, black businesses produce
few products that do not have to
compete with those made in large
quantities outside of the black com-
munity, the Urban League report adds.
While many black leaders right-
fully point to racism as a major barrier
to black business success, anti-
discrimination efforts may have also
hampered the growth of small African-
American shops and services. The
easing of racial segregation in New
York City in the 1950s and 1960s hurt
black businesses, says Lloyd Williams,
president of Harlem's Uptown Cham-
ber of Commerce. As the color barri-
ers were lowered somewhat, middle-
class blacks began to live and work
Perhaps the
biggest hurdle
.
IS access
to capital.
outside traditional black communi-
ties. With them went the financial
capital and technical skills that had
fueled local black-owned businesses
in earlier decades.
But the frustrations of would-be
black business owners long predated
the growing mobility of the black
middle class. The boycott of the Ko-
rean stores is onl y the latest chapter in
this ongoing saga. In the 1930s, Afri-
can Americans organized the Citizens
for Fair Play of New York to lead
boycotts of Jewish businesses in Har-
lem, where the owners refused to hire
African Americans. In the 1940s and
1950s, black anger was directed at the
large number of West Indian immi-
grants who opened up businesses in
"American" black communities. West
Indian business owners were often
derisively referred to as "black Jews"
by African Americans who had come
to New York long before the Carib-
bean blacks.
The lack of black commercial punch
is more than a dollars and sense is-
sue-it strikes at the very fabric of the
community. " S m a l ~ businesses pro-
vide a cultural vision that embraces
self-reliance and role models for young
people," says Brooklyn Assemblyman
Roger Green.
For black-owned businesses to
develop, centuries-old racist barriers
must crumble. But experts add that
local and federal government must
also expand programs that provide
access to capital and technical assis-
tance. Recipes for such programs
include the creation of a small busi-
ness institute by the state and the city
and the restructuring of federal Small
Business Administration loans so
borrowers don't have to provide much
up front capital.
Such programs would be a boon to
any would-be business owner. With-
out this assistance, blacks are likely to
remain at the back of the entrepre-
neurial bus. 0
David Hatchett is a New York-based
freelance writer.
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18jDECEMBER 1990jCITY UMITS
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Your community housing insurance profeSSionals
By Amy Bachrach
Turning Crisis
Into Opportunity
R
ecently overheard at Gracie
Mansion: "If you make me go
ahead with these cuts, I will
have to close two hospitals
and thousands of children will die of
lead poisoning." Said another offi-
cial, "And I'll have killed them be-
cause I couldn't afford to hire enough
housing code inspectors."
A tad melodramatic? Not really.
Mayor David Dinkins has just called
.. , .....
city officials are looking to trim
budgets.
It's easy to blame the city's cur-
rent fiscal problems on the reces-
sion. But that makes it sound as if
there was nothing that could have
been done to prevent this fiscal mess.
Many of our problems result from
bad fiscal policies from past admini-
strations. In the 1980s, officials
passed up opportunities when money
was more readily available
to invest in the city's physi-
; .... '11 .feill II
~ i l l I ... at ..
cal and human services in-
frastructure. Instead, the city
sponsored programs of
-,....
for another round of cuts in spend-
ing from all city agencies this year-
and bigger cuts for the year ahead.
He's telling us there is no money,
and although we've heard this be-
fore, the daily barrage of numbers in
a tumbling economy makes the re-
frain "no money" credible. Yes, New
York City is in crisis. But solutions
are available, and it is the energy and
ideas of New Yorkers like ourselves
that are the source of awnsers to the
city's problems.
Reluctance
Some may still be reluctant to say
it, but the fact is the city is in a reces-
sion. Because of this, our tax coffers
are no longer full. Real estate sales
are down, so property tax revenues
have dropped. Corporations are lay-
ing employees off, so personal in-
come tax revenues have fallen.
But as the economy declines, the
need for human services actually
escalates-for public assistance,
housing, education and health.
All of these require major invest-
ments of resources at the very time
City View is a forum for opinion
and does not necessarily reflect
the views of City Limits.
enormous tax incentives to
developers such as J -51,
which encouraged the con-
version of low income hous-
ing into luxury high-rises.
This policy eroded the city's
tax base, excusing those most able
from paying taxes while stealing low
income housing from the poor, many
of whom now sleep on our streets
and in our subways.
Now money is indeed tight, but
we have seen that it can be raised if
the public is convinced it is for
purposes taxpayers favor, such as
hiring more cops. The Dinkins
administration should try to convince
the public that the best use of our tax
funds is for the kind of social invest-
ments the mayor has long espoused.
Such investments will prove to be
cost effective in the not-so-distant
future, saving us the greater sums of
money that will have to be spent on
crime fighting, poorly trained youth,
teen pregnancy and other prevent-
able social problems.
Serious Flaws
The City Project, which manages
ALTERBUDGET, a coalition of more
than 250 nonprofit human service
providers and advocates, believes
opportunities exist to plug the budget
gap and expand services. At the same
time, officials can also correct some
serious flaws in the city's tax struc-
ture by making it more progressive
and equitable. Toward this end the
City Project offers several proposals:
Broaden the sales tax base. Instead
of increasing the existing sales tax
on everyday consumer necessities,
introduce a two percent sales tax on
professional services, such as those
of a lawyer or an accountant. This
would add $250 million in revenues
without placing an excessive burden
on business.
Increase personal income tax. The
personal income tax (PIT) is the city's
only progressive tax. The upper limit
of the PIT should be raised to 4.3
percent, the top rate before the city
chose to lower it in 1986. This would
add $350 million-a lot more day
care centers.
Increase the commuter tax. The
commuter tax should rise from the
current 0.45 percent to one percent.
The millions of people who commute
to work here everyday put a lot of
wear and tear on the city. They need-
and want-the city to be as safe and
clean as much as its residents do. We
need the commuters to contribute
their fair share. This would add $160
million-a lot more teachers and park
maintenance workers.
Increase the property tax in equi-
table ways. Property tax is by far the
largest single source of city tax
revenue, but along with sales tax, the
most inequitable. The city should
collect $300 million more from real
property by raising either rates or
assessments. It should do this in ways
that require those most able to carry
the additional burden to do so.
Contrary to the commonl y held belief,
the poor do pay taxes. They pay taxes
through their rent, which includes
the property taxes passed along from
their landlords. The city must also
address the unfair tax assessment of
small homes. Homeowners in poor
neighborhoods pay proportionally
more in property taxes than those in
wealthier communities.
New York City is in crisis. The
Dinkins administration must act now
to turn this crisis into opportunity.
By reaching out to his old-time allies
who now feel shut out-and not just
the financial community-this ad-
ministration can send a message of
hope and encourage everyone to con-
tribute in meaningful ways. In so
doing, this crisis can open the door
to the kinds of changes this city has
long needed. 0
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1990/19
By Lisa Glazer
The Tenant Psychopath
"Pacific Heights." Directed by John
Schlesinger. Starring Matthew
Modine, Melanie Griffith and Michael
Keaton.
B
uried in the press packet for
"Pacific Heights" is the ex-
planation for the movie's gene-
sis. A California screenwriter,
Daniel Pyne, rented an apartment he
owned with his wife to "the wrong
person."
"I had to evict somebody from a
three-flat building," he recalls. "I
thought it would be a really simple
procedure. He didn't pay, so he had
to leave. But then I started learning
more and more about the law. He
was scamming us, and even though
he didn't pay, he still had a right to
be there. That's the law."
As the press release from Twenti-
eth Century Fox puts it, the situation
was resolved only after "the tenant
dragged them through the laborious
and costly California eviction proce-
dures."
Mighty Leaps
Hmmm. There are some mighty
leaps being made here about who
has power in a landlord-tenant situ-
ation, and these assumptions are
repeated in "Pacific Heights," the
movie that grew from Pyne's experi-
ence.
To set the record straight: land-
lords are in control and it's tenants
who are in a vulnerable situation.
That's why there are laws to protect
them. Yes, there are tenants who
pull scams or trash apartments, but
there are also landlords who don't
do repairs, don't provide heat and
hot water, who sexually harass their
tenants or threaten and intimidate
them. These are all justifiable rea-
sons for withholding payment of the
rent. There are also tenants who don't
pay rent because they've just lost
their jobs or are in the midst of a
crisis. California and New York have
lengthy and complex eviction pro-
ceedings for exactly these reasons.
An eviction is rarely a simple matter
of clear right and wrong.
But in Hollywood, a place with a
longstanding love of simplified ver-
sions of reality, such complexities
are left on the cutting-room floor.
Pyne decided to liven up the story by
20/DECEMBER 1990/CITY UMITS
pushing his situation to its extreme
limits-it's about a sweet, well-
meaning yuppie couple who mort-
gage themselves to the gills, buy a
Victorian mansion, then make the
mistake of renting one of their apart-
ments to a wealthy businessman who
never pays his full rent. When the
landlords, Patty Palmer and Drake
Goodman (played by Melanie Grif-
fith and Matthew Modine) try to get
rid of their tenant, Carter Hayes, they
find out the process isn't as easy as
they hoped it would be. And behind
his aviator sunglasses and finely
tailored suits, Hayes turns out to be a
sadistic maniac determined to de-
stroy and defraud his landlords.
What we end up with is a small
dose of sloppy political commen-
tary-basically "Housing Court
Screws Landlords"-within a
slightly more successful attempt at
creating a sleek, sophisticated psy-
chological thriller.
Unsympathetic Characters
The move does have slick edges-
lush music, sharp cinematography,
meticulous design-but the charac-
ters are loosely drawn and unsympa-
thetic. Goodman and Palmer make
so many major screw-ups that it's
hard to feel sorry for them. To start
off, they can barely fill out a mort-
gage form. They manage to do a lovely
job renovating their mansion, but
they rent to Carter Hayes even though
he doesn't have as much money on
hand as he says he does. And once
Hayes starts to get seriously nasty,
Goodman doesn't handle the situ-
ation very well-he lets his frustra-
tion boil over and beats the hell out
of Hayes. This happens more than
once, and is the real reason that the
eviction proceeds at such a snail's
pace. If Goodman could have kept
his fists to himself, a lot of his prob-
lems would have been solved.
As viewers, we're supposed to be
upset when Hayes doesn't pay rent
and the young landlords have to
scramble to meet their mortgage pay-
ments. Palmer goes to a seedy neigh-
borhood to try and get a quick $5,000
loan to avoid foreclosure. But she's
still driving a snazzy yellow jeep ...
Carter Hayes is a slightly more
interesting character. Deftly acted
by Michael Keaton, he becomes truly
Not a Friendly Face: Michael Keaton plays Carter
Hayes, the evil tenant in "Pacific Heights. "
fearsome by insinuating niceness
(sending notes and gifts to the land-
lords to apologize for the "mix-up"
that has caused a delay in his rent
payment) then slowly but sure 1 y sabo-
taging the couple's dreams. He drills
holes in the middle of the night and
breeds cockroaches that infiltrate the
adjacent apartment, causing the quiet
Chinese couple next door to move
out. As the tension escalates, he at-
tempts to kill Palmer and Goodman,
but when the police arrives, tells his
side of the story and gets an order of
protection against Goodman.
Nonetheless, the eviction finally
takes place and Carter Hayes moves
on to his next victim, but gets caught
by Patty Palmer, who turns into an
amateur sleuth. So all's well that
ends well. The final irony is that
despite all their difficulties,
Goodman and Palmer manage to
resell their house for more than they
paid-to another attractive yuppie
couple.
If a tenant had been through the
wringer with a difficult landlord, you
can be sure they wouldn't come out
ahead. And if the tenant was poor, he
or she could easily end up on the
streets homeless. But then again, that
might be too strong a dose of reality.
The main problem with "Pacific
Heights" is that it's hard to take seri-
ously. The director should have in-
creased the tension half a notch and
turned it into a blood-and-guts hor-
ror flick: "The Tenant Psychopath
From Hell." 0
No Marxist Manual!
To the Editor:
RobertW. Snyder gives agood feel
for my "The Closest of Strangers:
Liberalism and the Politics of Race
in New York" (City Limits, Nov.
1990). As an old contributor to City
Limits, I thank you for running his
fine review.
But I don't believe, as Snyder sug-
gests, that problems of race are sim-
ply the product of economic ine-
qualities and that killing capitalism's
abuses will dissolve racism. If I did,
I'd have written a Marxist organizer's
manual, not the essay on civic cul-
ture and moral responsibility I did
write. I believe that economic injus-
tice leaves its victims no alternative
but to uphold transracial moral val-
ues and discipline-the basic truths
of political activism that know no
color. Otherwise they'll never or-
ganize well. The community hous-
ing movement understands this and
has rejected a politics of race. The
parlor and academic left isn't as
smart; it has deferred to the mislead-
ership of racial demagogues and
narrow nationalists.
I share Snyder's hope that my ex-
asperation with such people won't
discourage the good readers of City
Limits from reading and debating
"The Closest of Strangers." Snyder
is right: the subject is much too
important to ignore. To help the
debate along, I'll gladly send other
reviews of the book, along with a
copy of Snyder's, to anyone who
writes me at 225 E. 14th Street, 2B,
NYC 10003.
Jim Sleeper
Author, "The Closest of Strangers"
Very, Very Excellent
To the Editor:
What a wonderful story you
printed on the workings of Part ofthe
Solution (POTS) in your October
issue of City Limits. These hard
working folks run a fantastic pro-
!I
gram of rehabilitation. One visit to
their place will be sure to convince
you of the merit of their honest
commitment to the homeless. They
give labor to the task of the homeless
becoming active and very produc-
tive members of the community.
They strive to do this with limited
funding and do it excellently. Their
contributions to the quality of life
here in the Br:onx is worth noting. I
would be the first one to set them up
as a model of how a shelter should be
run and would suggest that any group
contemplating the operation of a
small shelter use them as a role model.
Keep up your very, very excellent
publication that keeps us informed
and on our toes.
Henry Muller Jr.
East Tremont Neighborhood
Association
Editor's note: City Limits wel-
comes letters from our readers.
We ask that you try to keep your
letters to 300 words in length.
Bankers Trust Company
Community Development Group
A resource for the non,profit
development community
Gary Hattem,Vice President
280 Park Avenue, 19West New York, New York 10017
Tel:212,850,3487 FAX:212,850,2380
CITY UMITSIDECEMBER 1990/21
PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY
Barry K. Mallin
Attorney At Law
A decade of service representing
community development organizations
and low income cooperatives.
56 Thomas Street
New York, N.Y. 10013
Telephone 212/619-6800
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-Profit Law
Title and loan closings 0 All city housing programs
Mutual housing associations 0 Coopertive conversions
Advice to low income co-op boards of directors
100 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, (718) 624-6850
architectural/engineering services for nonprofit developers
o Building Evaluation and Inspection
o Feasibility Studies 0 Construction Supervision
o Preliminary Design/Scope of Work Studies
o Complete Construction Drawings & Specifications
Call John Harris RA. for an evaluation of your project's needs
458 BERGEN STREET, BROOKLYN, NY 11217 (718) 398-1440
BERNARD CARR ASSOCIATES
J-S1 TAX BENEFIT EXPEDITING
Specialists In:
HDFC'S Gut Rehabilitation
Vacant Building Program Developments
CALL TODAY FOR A FREE CONSULTATION
1740 Victor Street, Bronx, NY 10462 Tel. 12121824-5044
WILLIAM JACOBS
CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT
Over 20 years experience. Specializing in nonprofit housing &
community development organizations.
Certified Annual Audits Compilation & Review Services
Management Advisory Services Tax Consultation & Preparation
77 QUAKER RIDGE ROAO, SUITE 215
NEW ROCHELLE, NY 10804
914-633-5095 FAX-914-633-5097
22jDECEMBER 1990/CITY UMITS
ASHOK MENON
Attorney at Law
Specializing in representation of co-op boards
co-op, condo & house closings commercial leases
purchase & sale of business & professional practices
wills & probates business immigrant visas
875 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 500
New York, NY
(212) 695-2929
SMOLLENS and GURALNICK,
COUNSELLORS AT LAW
Specializing in representing tenants only in
landlord/tenant proceedings, cooperative
conversions, loft proceedings. We represent
sellers/buyers in house, condo and co-op closings.
15 Maiden Lane, Suite 1800
New York, NY 10038
212/406-3320
ARCHITECTURAL & PLANNING DIVISION
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board
Specialists In Nonprofit Housing
and Community Facilities
FULL ARCHITECTURAL SERVICES
Zoning Analyses' Design Through Construction Documents
Inspection, Evaluation & Feasibility Reports
Contact Betsy Calhoun or Paul Castrucci, A.A. 212/226-4119
40 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
WM. SHUBERT & COMPANY
Real Estate Appraisers
Excellent Quality
Prompt Delivery
Dedicated to Community Service
3190 Riverdale Ave., Bronx, NY 601-2200
TURF COMPANIES
Building Management/Consultants
Specializing in management & development
services to low income housing cooperatives,
community organizations and co-op
boards of directors
329 Flatbush Avenue
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217
Rebecca Reich
718/857 -0468
WORKSHOP
HOUSING SPECIALIST. For St. Christopher-Ottilie. To assist parents
in locating housing so they may have their children returned from
Foster Care. S/he will work directly with families, landlords, bro-
kers & Child Welfare personnel. Bachelor's degree required,
salary low 20s. Contact Mark Redmond, 93 South 9th Street,
Brooklyn, NY 11211.
COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR. The National Housing Institute, a
nonprofit publication and research center dedicated to the cause
of affordable housing, seeks commuhications director. Respon-
sible for press relations, fundraising, writing & editing Shelteriorce
magazine. Salary to $35K plus good benefits. Send resume &
references to NHI, 439 Main St, Orange, NJ 07050. (201) 678-
3110.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZER. Knowledge of housing laws, regs, famili-
arity with DHCR contracts a must. Meticulous, out-going, asser-
tive. Work with tenants/landlords: attend meetings, offer technical
assistance/referrals regarding available housing assistance pro-
grams & other issues including recycling, graffiti, building mainte-
nance. 16 hours/week at $11 /hr. Resumes: Betsy Farrell , The
Sunnyside Foundation, 41 -13 47th St, Sunnyside, NY 11104.
STAFF ATTORNEY. Activist community organization in Hell's Kitchen
seeks fUll -time attorney who is committed to affordable housing.
L&T experience preferred but not required. Position involves:
representation of low income tenants & tenant associations,
conducting impact & affirmative action litigation, community
education & organizing. Starting date: ASAP. Resumes: Miriam
Nieves, Housing Conservation Coordinators, Inc., 777 Tenth Ave,
NYC 10019. Minority applicants & women encouraged to apply.
ADVERTISING SALES REPRESENTATIVE. For City Limits magazine.
Work part-time, from your own home. Commission only, with
expenses reimbursed. Must be outgoing, organized and have
good oral and written skills. Resumes: City Limits, 40 Prince St,
NYC 10012.
STAFF OPENING TO FILL?
ADVERTISE YOUR JOB/INTERNSHIP
IN THE "WORKSHOP"
HOUSING THE ENVIRONMENT
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RATES: $40.00 for a maximum of 50
words. Display Help Wanted - $30 per
col. inch
DEADLINE: 15th of the month for the
next issue.
Call 212/925-9820 to place your ad!
Or FAX it to CITY LIMITS
at 212/966-3407!
Competitively Priced'/nsurance
have been providing low-cost insurance programs and quality service
for HDFC's, TENANTS, COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT and other NONPROFIT
organizations for the past 10 years.
Our Coverages Include:
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CITY UMITSIDECEMBER 1990/23

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