City Limits Magazine, January 1993 Issue

January 1993 New York's Community Affairs News Magazine
T H E G R E E NI NG O F H AR L E M 0 T H E P O O R S E R V I NG T H E P O O R
R E B U I L D I NG CO MMU NI T Y AT K I NG S CO U NT Y H O S P I T AL
T ax D ollars at Work
T he federal government gives landlords high rents
And lets the buildings rot.
$2.50
Citv Limits
Volume XVIII Number 1
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2/JANUARY 1993/CITY UMITS
An Agenda for Cisneros
F
ive hundred developments with 100,000 apartments. That's enough
housing for the entire population of Staten Island, or for the
residents of homeless shelters throughout the tri-state area. It's a
key housing resource, in other words-and the federal government
is squandering much of it.
This month's investigative feature, "Malign Neglect," by Steve Mitra,
details how a number of private developments built and maintained with
hefty federal subsidies have deteriorated into squalid, unsafe projects.
Housing horror stories aren't new in New York City-but this one is
different, because federal programs hand the landlords of these develop-
ments market rate rents between $600 and $1,200 a month for each
apartment. The money is there-but is it being used for proper main-
tenance and upkeep?
Making sure the answer is yes is the job of t h ~ federal Department of
Housing and Urban Development. But, as Mitra shows, the local HUD
office has only five inspectors for the 1,400 developments it oversees.
And HUD officials openly admit they prefer to work with landlords rather
than against them. In the process, they ignore their own guidelines,
which demand that landlords account for their failings and make
improvements-or face foreclosure by HUD.
President-elect Bill Clinton campaigned on a theme of change; this is
one area where it's long overdue. We hope that Henry Cisneros, the new
HUD secretary, will meet with HUD-assisted tenants locally and nationall y,
and renew a commitment to the basic oversight that's been neglected
during 12 years of Republican rule .
Jimmy Carter, the chairman of the Citywide Coalition of Tenants in
Federally-Assisted Housing, states his message to HUD simply and
eloquently: "Just enforce your own guidelines." C
Cover photograph by Suzanne Tobias.

j

FEATURES
A Two-Way Street
The New York City Health Crisis Coalition is demand-
ing community input in the management of Kings County
Hospital. 12
Malign Neglect
Tax subsidized, low-income housing deteriorates under
the feds' ineffective oversight. 16
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial
An Agenda for Cisneros ........................................... 2
Briefs
St. Luke's Lawsuit .... ................ .... ............... ... .... ....... 4
Support Systems ....................................................... 4
Bergen Street Blues ..... ......... .. ....... ............ ............... . 4
No Cross Subsidy ...................................................... 5
Profile
The Earthmother of Harlem .......... .... ... .. ......... ..... ..... 6
Pipeline
The Poor Serving the Poor ........................................ 8
CilyView
Stop the Chaos! ..... .. ....... .......... ............... ....... ........ . 24
Review
Chasing the Dragon ................................................. 26
Resources Clearinghouse .......................................... 27
Letters ........................................................................ 28
Job Ads ....................................................................... 31
Earthmother/Page 6
Two-Way Street/Page 12
Malign Neglect/Page 16

CITY UMITS/JANUARY 1993/3
11:';""11
ST. LUKE'S LAWSUIT
Harlem community groups
and churches are protesting St.
luke's-Roosevelt Hospital
Center's renewed attempt to
move most of its maternity beds
and its children's ward from
Morningside Heights to mid-
Manhattan. The community
coalition says the move would
leave Harlem without essential
hospital services for pregnant
women, infants and children,
and they recently filed suit in
federal court to stop it.
"They are moving away from
a black and latino population to
a white population. It's clearly a
question of money,'1 says Rever-
end Earl Kooperkamp of the
Church of the Intercession on
155th Street. The suit charges
that St. luke's-Roosevelt is
violating civil rights and hospital
financing laws.
Six years ago, the New York
State Deportment of Health
approved the consolidation of
maternal and child health
services at the medical center's
Roosevelt Hospital on West 59th
Street. The hospital center is in
the midst of a vast expansion
and must boost revenues while
cutting costs to pay debts in-
curred by the new construction,
according to Crain's New York
Business.
But in July 1990, after an
explosion of protest in the
community, fOrmer state health
commissioner David Axelrod
ordered the hospital to maintain
minimal maternity and neonatal
wards and "necessary pediatric
services" at the St. luke's site
uptown. The hospital's new plan
adheres roughly to that order,
though it would slash pediatric
beds from 43 to zero. It would
also eliminate 37 maternity beds
at St. luke's next year, leaving
22, and cut neonatal intensive
care beds from 16 to 14.
Members of the community
coalition, which includes Com-
munity Boord Nine, Harlem
Valley Churches, Interfaith
Assembly on Homelessness and
Housing, West Harlem Environ-
mental Action and others, point
out that the obstetric and neona-
tal wards at other nearby
hospitals-Columbia Presbyte-
rian and Harlem-already
operate at or above capacity.
They add that residents in the St.
4/JANUARY 1993/CITY UMns
Hittlac It Home: Woodworkers on the steps of City HaJJ protest the city's
failure to properly manage their Greenpoint manufacturing center.
The city has since addressed some of their concerns.
luke's service area would be
unlikely to travel to West 59th
Street for immediate care.
Most coalition members
acknowledge that their primary
goal is to work out a compro-
mise with the hospital, but they
say they filed the lawsuit be-
cause the hospital refuses to
invite the community to the
negotiating table. 'We're
hoping that the pressure from
the lawsuit will help start up the
dialogue before the whole court
process starts to drag on,"
explains Kooperkamp.
Michele DeMilly, a spokes-
person for St.luke's-Roosevelt,
maintains that the hospital has
been responsive to the commu-
nity. The coalition is "going to
have to wait until 1993 wnen
the consolidation takes place to
realize that St. luke's is still
serving the community with
enough beds," says DeMilly.
''This hospital doesn't discrimi-
nate," DeMilly maintains. She
calls the lawsuit "a frivolous
action . .. .It diverts precious
health care dollars to litigation."
Marianne Engelman lado, a
staff attorney for the NAACP
who represents the coolition,
disagrees: "No one is forcing
St. luke's to pour money into
legal services when they could
just sit down and negotiate,"
she says. 'We don't want to
bonkrupt this hospital,"adds
Harold lowe, a community
representative for Congressmen
Charles Rangel. "But tile hospi-
tal has not been forthcoming
about their problems or reasons
for moving the beds. If the
lawsuit can bring us all to the
table then it will have done its
job." LJ Jon Gertner
SUPPORT SYSTEMS
A new organization commit-
ted to spending $6 million in
New York to reduce homeless-
ness and create housing for
people with special needs
announced the kickoff of its
program last month.
The Corporation for Support-
ive Housing (CSH), a national
organization led by Julie
Sandorf, intends to provide
housing combined with services
like treatment for drug addic-
tion, counseling, and care for
AIDS.
Formed a yeqr ago, CSH is
already funding $2.3 million in
programs nationwide, in cities
like Chicago, San Jose, and
New Haven. But the largest
chunk-$l .2 million-is al -
ready being pumped into New
York. ''The problem is so much
bigger in New York than in
other cities," says Sandorf. In
December, CSH officially
announced the opening of its
New York operation.
CSH's model for decent
housing is a stable, permanent
community of mostly single
adults housed in a building
along with one or more case
workers, who provide some
counseling to get through
temporary crises, and who will
refer people to existing commu-
nity services for larger problems,
according to Robyn Minter,
assistant program officer for
CSH.
"If someone is having a
breakdown-like if a former
drug addict is getting bock into
drugs-then there's somebody
there who can identify the
change and provide a link to
services," Minter says.
CSH has enormous re-
sources-about $20 million from
foundations like The Pew Chari-
table Trust, The Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation, The Ford
Foundation and the Hilton
Foundation. It can also leverage
money from corporations using
the low-income housing tax
credit. CSH hopes to do for
special needs housing what
local Initiatives Support Coali-
tion and the Enterprise Founda-
tion do for low-income housing,
says Sandorf. In the future, CSH
will pump about $6 million into
programs in the city.
Sandorf, who worked with
lISC from 1986 to 1989, says
she saw the need for funding
supportive housing by watcning
organizations across the country
struggling to provide services, in
isolation, on "a wing and a
prayer." CSH not only provides
money but technical support and
information for such housing. 0
Steve Mitra
BERGEN STREET
BLUES
Despite a recent decision in
civil court, there is no end in
sight for a bottle between the
city and a mortgage investor
that has left a gaping, ugly
wound in the landscape of
Prospect Heights for six years.
Delays causea by the court case
have left most of a city block in
ruins-along with the subsi-
dized one, two and three-family
homes that were under construc-
tion there a decade ago.
The property is part of an
urbon renewal site cleared by
the city and sold to a developer,
the MMRR Construction Corpo-
ration, for $27,500 in 1982. In
exchange, the developer agreed
to build 54 homes on the
;
property, which lies on Bergen
and Dean streets between
Vanderbilt and Underhill av-
enues, and sell them to middle-
income buyers who would
receive mortgage subsidies from
the federal government. The
project was also subsidized by
the city's housing department.
The developer laid 32 foun-
dations, finished 11 houses and
almost completed another 11
before going bankrupt in 1984.
In May of that year, Chemical
Bank i'oreclosed on a $5 million
mortgage given to MMRR. And
two years later, the city took
ownership of the property in lieu
of unpaid property taxes.
While the 11 completed
houses are occupied, the unfin-
ished houses and foundations
have been crumbling ever since.
City officials turned the site over
to a new developer-the New
York City Partnership-to com-
plete the affordable housing
plan. But since 1988, when
Chemical Bank sold the rights to
the unpaid mortgage to an
investor, Alexander Fischer, he
and the city have been fighting
in court over which of them
actually owns the land, and the
Partnership has had to put the
project on hold.
At one point the Partnership
even put out a request for bids
from contractors to work on the
site. ''Then this guy rematerial-
ized seeking his pound of Aesh,"
says Kathy Wylde, the organiza-
tion's director. The problem now,
according to city officials, is that
Fischer refuses to negotiate a
deal with the city out of court.
Instead, he is demanding full
compensation for the unpaid
mortgage, which is now worth
$8 million. 'We discussed the
p<>ssibility of a deal," says one
official. "But they've never come
down from the $8 million. When
you ask for the whole ball of
wax, .it' s not really worth talking
about." Neither Fischer nor his
lawyer, Irwin Brownstein, could
be reached for comment.
Civil Court Judge Randolph
Jackson recently ruled that the
city could condemn the property,
pay Alexander the $8 million,
and begin construction. But the
city claims it owns the property
outright and shouldn't have to
pay Fischer a cent, says Fay Ng,
assistant city corporation coun-
sel. So she plans to appeal the
residents and nonprofit organi-
zations on its board of directors.
Seven of the buildings are now
occupied, according to the
association's director, Matthew
lovick. Housing department
officials did not respond to
gueries about the status of
fUrther subsidized development
in the community.
The cross-subsidy deal also
established a tenants' legal
assistance and advocacy
organization, the lower East
Side local Enforcement Unit
(lEU), that is currently focing serious financial troubles. The

group was originally funded
with about $500,000 from the
city property sales, but that
Ten V ..... and Countlnl= While the city and a mortgage investor battle
over this Prospect Heights block, decade-old foundations crumble.
case to the state's highest court,
the Court of Appeals. Neither
she, Wylde, nor the local
community board have any idea
how much longer the neighbor-
hood will have to wait bei'ore
the mess in its midst is repaired.
local residents and workers
at an elementary school across
the street complain that drug
addicts smoke and shoot up
among the foundations and in
the empty houses, and trucks
illegally dump tires and gar-
bage. "It's really disgusting,"
says louise Marotto, who lives
in a small wood frame house
next to the site. r::: Donna
leslie and Andrew White
NO CROSS SUBSIDY
A development program that
signaled a high point in rela-
tions between lower East Side
housing advocates and the
mayoral administration of
Edward Koch is all but dead,
thanks to changes in the real
estate marketplace. And it's not
necessarily a bad thing, advo-
cates say.
The lower East Side Cross-
Subsidy Program was ham-
mered together in negotiations
five years ago between the
Department of Housing Preser-
vation and Development (HPD),
Community Board Three and the
lower East Side Joint Planning
Council, a coalition of 30
housing organizations and
advocates. The program was
meant to make the most of
gentrification in the East Village
by siphoning money from the
sale of city property for market-
rate housing into construction
and rehabilitation of low-income
apartments.
But officials and community
board members signed the
agreement creating the program
just 0 few weeks before the stock
market crash in 1987, and
before long unsubsidized real
estate development in the
neighborhood became virtually
nonexistent.
Originally, the city planned
to raise $49 million by selling
properties it owned on East 2nd
Street, Avenue A, Avenue C and
Suffolk Street to market-rate
developers. The money was
meant to be combined with
other subsidies to fund 1,000
apartments for low and moder-
ate income families in the
neighborhood, according to the
agreement.
But only a few small parcels
were sold to for-profit develop-
ers. Nevertheless, the city has
spent about $5 million on the
renovation of 246 subsidized
apartments in the area for low
and moderate income families.
Some of the money went to the
Peaple's Mutual Housing Asso-
ciation, which took ownership of
20 formerly city-owned build-
ings for the creation of low-
income housing. A mutual
housing association is a multi -
building cooperative that
includes tenants, community
money ran out in mid-1992.
Budget cuts have forced the lEU
to layoff two of its five staffers,
a lawyer and an organizer.
In its first year, 1990, the
lEU assisted tenants in about
100 buildings, says director
Oda Friedheim. Although the
agency was conceived at a time
ot rampant real estate specula-
tion in the nei9hborhood and
some landlords were actively
trying to force out low-rent
tenants, Friedheim says the lEU
is needed as bodly as ever.
''The after-effects of
gentrification [are] a lot more
subtle and at the same time
more insidious," she argues,
explaining that landlords are
trying to deal with heavy
indebtedness by charging illegal
rent increases and failing to
make basic repairs.
The lEU has been assisted
with grants from banks, founda-
tions, and elected officials. But
the group is still teetering. 'We
are committed to surviving/,
says Friedheim, "but I can't
guarantee that we will ."
Few advocates that
the market-rate side of the
cross-subsidy plan can be
revived, and they are optimistic
that means there will be more
property available for govern-
ment-assisted development. "It'll
become clearer and clearer as
time goes by that [develorrs]
are just not going to buil
market-rate housing hard by
Avenue D," says Carol Watson,
a planning council member.
''That land will sit for a while,
and then will be developed for
affordable housing." L J Aaron
Jaffe
By Beth Greenfield
The Earthmother of Harlem
Bernadette Cozart transformed a garbage-filled lot
into a haven for tomato plants, weeping dogwood
trees and 2,000 tulip bulbs.
,
'T
his is not normal."
Bernadette Cozart is
standing among cold
asphalt, brick and steel on
the corner of 133rd and Lenox, in
Harlem.
"People think that if you take a
person and put them in the wilds of
nature, they will turn
into a beast. ... But it is
this that makes beasts
out of people," she
says, motioning to the
run-down tenements
and busy streets
around her.
ness, her head wrapped in a thick
green headband, her shoulders draped
in warm, comfortable work clothes,
and her face spreading into an arrest-
ing smile.
Raised in Cleveland, Cozart dis-
covered her love for things that grow
through her godmother, who owned a
that they used to create nine new
gardens at Carl Schurz Park.
This would have made most teach-
ers happy, but Cozart's mind kept
drifting from the Upper East Side to
Harlem, where she lives. She began to
wonder if the teenagers wouldn't be
better off serving their own commu-
nity, where gardens were more
desperately needed. And so, after some
discussions and a few bureaucratic
setbacks, the Greening of Harlem
Coalition was born. It is a community-
based and evolving coalition of city
agencies, local organizations and
churches. Some members include the
150-155th St.-Edgecombe Avenue
Block Association, the Marcus Garvey
Park Conservancy,
Harlem Hospital's
Injury Prevention
Project, and the New
York City Depart-
ment of Parks and
Recreation, which
pays for Cozart's
time. The gardening
projects are funded
by grants and dona-
tions from the Coun-
cil on the Environ-
ment, the Central
Park Conservancy,
o Norcross Wild Life
~ Fund, the Hunt Alter-
i3 natives Fund and
~ others.
~ P.S. 133 in Harlem
Cozart sees no rea-
son why nature
shouldn't be a part of
the city-and has
made it her business
to make sure that it is.
She is the leader and
founder of the Green-
ing of Harlem Coali-
tion,agroupthatsaves
dying land in Harlem
by bringing it back to
life with the health
and beauty of flowers
and vegetables.
In Her Element: Bernadette Cozart-the founder and leader of the Greening of Harlem
Coalition-in a garden she helped create.
was lucky enough to
join forces with
Cozart to replace one
Taking Back the Land
Cozart is a fearless gardener. She
searches out abandoned lots that have
become dumping grounds suffocated
by beer bottles and leached with
asbestos to the point of becoming a
safety hazard. Then she salvages the
soil with her potion of cow manure,
bone meal and peat moss, plants seeds
and relocates trees and vines until her
garden is complete. She has worked
with and taught gardening to school
children, prisoners, AIDS patients,
pregnant teens, senior citizens, and
many others, and she is nowhere near
finished "taking back the land" in
Harlem.
"There is so much of the city that is
salvageable environmentally," she
says. "But instead, it becomes a haven
for trash."
Like the gardens she creates, Cozart
is a welcome sight amid the harsh-
a/JANUARY 1993/CITY UMITS
flower shop and trained her to become
a florist. The godmother also had a
back yard, where Cozart taught her-
self gardening. She studied horti-
culture in Ohio, then gardening at'the
State University of New Yark, but she
never really liked school. Her real
learning came when she moved to
New York City and worked as the
gardener at Carl Schurz Park, which
surrounds the mayor's residence on
the Upper East Side. During this time,
she attracted a group of teenagers who
came to watch her work when they
were supposed to be in school. She
decided that if they were so interested,
they would have to do more than just
watch, and she began assigning them
different jobs. Before long, she decided
to begin an after-school program
teaching gardening to students. Her
group began with nine 14-year-olds,
who learned basic gardening skills
garbage-strewn lot
with a garden. What used to be a mess
of car parts is now a haven for 2,000
tulip bulbs, weeping dogwood trees,
tomato plants, and soft, carpet-like
sod, guarded by a fence that is curled
with a replanted grapevine. It was
created entirely by a kindergarten
class, some of whom had never before
seen a vegetable garden.
Each Garden a Lesson
"She convinced them that they
could do it.. .convinced them to put
their hands in the soil," says Sunjilee
Pegram, the school principal. It was a
"very new experience for most of these
children to plant and watch things
grow ... seeing the results of their work."
Pegram adds that few people have the
time and energy to really help with
school projects, but Cozart has fol-
lowed through, creating a partnership
with the school that has continued for
four years. "You [usually] just don't
get that kind of commitment," Pegram
says.
Although there are about a dozen
other gardening organizations in the
city, Cozart's work is unique. Each of
her gardens is designed to suit the
grounds where it's planted as well as
"She convinced
them to put
their hands in
the soil."
the people participating in its creation,
so that "each one becomes a lesson."
For example, a garden Cozart helped
create at a school for pregnant teens
encouraged participation by the
mothers-to-be by allowing them to
work at comfortable height levels as
they planted flowers and built a
wading pool for their children.
Cozart also believes in efficient use
of space and the use of soil that exists
on-site, instead of using flower boxes,
which she feels only cover up the
problems of polluted and abandoned
ground. The key, she says, is to work
the soil and rejuvenate it.
"She energizes the community to
do something about the quality of
life," notes Angela Dews, a Harlem
resident who directs the uptown office
ofBorough President Ruth Messinger.
"She's very driven-she's got a
mission."
The Goddess Garden
Cozart's next mission is quite
elaborate. She is planning a "Goddess
Garden," which she hopes will be
planted before the end of this year.
Blueprints for the garden show an
open space built in a pattern of four
representing the four seasons, the four
elements, and the four spiritual aspects
of goddesses-warrior, matriarch,
intellectual and emotional being. The
center will be a reflecting pool for the
moon, surrounded by white flowers
and plants. Also included in the plans
are a vegetable garden, herb garden,
grape trellis, and a tent for meetings.
The project will be constructed
entirely by women, and the vegetables
and herbs will be used for canning
and creating homemade vinegar,
Cozart says.
enced in the mostly-male field of
horticulture. Although the project is
very involved and ambitious, she is
confident it will exist soon. And some-
how, as her eyes dance with excite-
ment, and her words hit the air with
great passion, it becomes extremely
easy to believe her.
There is a core group of 15 women
invol ved so far-and Cozart welcomes
others from anywhere in the city to
participate. The final site hasn't been
chosen, but she hopes to find an
appropriate spot in Harlem near a
well-lit subway station, for safety
reasons.
"Get women on fire,"she says. "Next
thing you know you can raise a sky-
scraper in a week."
The Goddess Garden seems to be
Cozart's true passion, inspired in part
by the years of ostracism she experi-
Beth Greenfield is an intern at City
Limits.
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By Steven Wishnia
The Poor Serving the Poor
Many employees of nonprofit organizations face
poverty after years of low pay and few benefits.
M
ary Lattang can't afford to
retire.
The 68-year-old cook at a
senior citizens' center in the
College Point section of Queens says
she "can manage fine" on the $19,700
a year she makes after working there
for 18 years. But like many workers in
the nonprofit sector, she doesn't get a
pension. If she Tetires, she says, she
would have to live on $600 a month
Social Security, lose her health insur-
ance-and possibly be forced to sell
the house she's lived in all her life.
"It's a pity to walk out of a place
after so many years and get nothing,"
she says, sitting in a basement office
in the brick building that houses the
center. Upstairs, about 50 elderly
people eat a Friday lunch of fish cakes,
spaghetti, and broccoli-funded by
the federal government, administered
by the state and run by a local non-
profit organization, the Hellenic
American Neighborhood Action Com-
mittee (HANAC). Yet none of these
agencies is ultimately responsible for
Lattang's predicament.
Like most nonprofits in the social
services arena, HANAC runs its meal
program under the aegis of a city
government contract, which provides
guidelines for worker salaries and
benefits. Those guidelines rarely
include provisions for retirement
plans or even worker benefits, and
since 1990 the annual salary increases
authorized by the city for nonprofit
employees are less than those
accorded unionized city workers.
The issue of salaries and benefits in
the nonprofit world is gaining in-
creased attention as advocates of
downsizing in government-other-
wise known as privatization-pro-
mote plans that would shift work out
of the hands of city employees and
into the laps of their nonprofit counter-
parts.
In their community offices, home-
less shelters and senior centers, non-
profit workers live with what some
consider a stark paradox: those who
serve the poor are standing on the
edge of poverty themselves. "These
are people on the front line of human
services," says Bobbie Sackman of the
Council of Senior Centers and
Services. Seventy percent of the
workers in senior centers are women,
she estimates, with nearly half
minorities and many in their 50s. "We
feel like we're creating the next
generation of elderly poor," she says.
"What is the city doing to itself?"
Salaries Vary
Nonprofit social service groups
comprise a large portion of New York
City government spending, and a
notable chunk of the city's economy.
Altogether, the organizations spend
more than $6 billion dollars a year on
"We're creating
the next
generation
of elderly poor."
operating costs-nearly three-quarters
of it from government contracts,
according to a recent study by the
Nonprofit Coordinating Committee
of New York. And that doesn't even
include the budgets of hospitals,
health clinics and health-related
programs.
Social service nonprofits employ
nearly 80,000 New Yorkers, 63,500 of
them full-time. But their average salary
is only $14,522, according to a 1989
study by the city's Department of
Finance. Another study, by the
Rockefeller Institute, found that non-
profit employees in New York State
earn onl y 68 cents on every dollar that
government workers earn doing
similar jobs. For lower-level profes-
sionals such as caseworkers, salaries
above the low 30s are rare. For support
staff such as orderlies, cooks,
secretaries and security guards, pay is
often as low as $11,000.
But for executives, salaries are
generally proportional to the organ-
ization's size. The Community Service
Society, with a $14.4 million budget,
paid its president and chief executive
officer $215,000 in 1991, according to
state tax filings. High salaries are not
uncommon at the nation's major
health and welfare nonprofits-one
recent study found an average salary
of $127,300 among chief executives.
The foundations that help fund their
work-nonprofits themselves-also
pay their leaders exceedingly well.
Franklin Thomas, president of the
$6.3 billion Ford Foundation, received
$545,255 in salary and benefits in
1991. And the United Way salary
scandal is now infamous.
Much further down the scale is the
director of the St. Nicholas Neighbor-
hood Preservation Corporation, a
Brooklyn housing organization with a
$3.4 million budget, who earned
$58,000 in 1991. At the bottom are
directors of community-based groups
with budgets of less than $200,000:
for instance, Mary Langguth of the
Kingsbridge Heights Neighborhood
Improvement Association and Ellie
Montalbano of the College Point senior
center each earns less than $30,000 a
year.
Many workers question whether
the leaders of large non profits can
justifiably earn as much as they do. "If
you make $100,000 a year, how can
you identify with a woman with four
kids on public assistance?" asks one
poverty researcher. But others say that
as large nonprofits play an increasingly
important role providing necessary
services, it's important to pay compe-
titive salaries to lure top-quality
executives who will stay with the
organizations.
While salaries like Thomas' have
become notorious conversation
pieces, most nonprofit executive pay
doesn't remotely compare to the stag-
gering earnings of chief executives in
the for-profit, corporate world. In 1990,
Michael Eisner of Walt Disney, for
instance, made more money every day
than many of his employees earned in
a year. On average, according to
BusinessWeek, chief executives of
major American corporations make
85 times the pay of a factory worker.
In Japan, by contrast, the difference is
onl y 17 times, a figure more in line
with large nonprofits.
But that's still a huge gap, espe-
ciallyat social service nonprofits that
.
~
Department of Hous-
ing Preservation and
Development only
cover salaries up to
$40,000 for a director,
$28,000to$31,000for
different types of
housing specialists
and $18,300 for sec-
retaries and clerk-typ-
ists, according to
Langguth. If an orga-
nization wants to pay
more, it has to raise
extra money from
foundations or do-
nors.
exist purely because
of the plight of the
poor. "We've created
a whole industry of
professions based on
someone else's pov-
erty," says Chuck
Matthei, the former
head of the In-stitute
for Community Eco-
nomics in Western
Massachusetts. "In
that light, the differ-
ences in income are
that much more ob-
scene." Matthei and
others suggest that
directors' salaries
should be closely tied
to their lowest-paid
workers, and add that
a renewed examina-
tion of the issue is long
overdue.
All Work and No Pay.()ff: 68-year old Mary Lattang. a staffer at a College Point senior
citizens' center. fears she will lose her health insurance and her home if she retires.
Groups that sup-
plement contracted
salary levels say they
have little choice be-
cause they need
workers with special
skills. "You can't hire
a counselor for
Constant Stress
Dissatisfaction about low pay is
especially common in offices where
caseworkers and organizers face the
constant stress of working with poor
people in difficult straits. "We're all
tired, overworked and underpaid,"
says Langguth, only half joking. Her
Bronx community-organizing group
works mainly on housing issues.
Few people expect to build a com-
fortable cushion in their bank accounts
working for social service and hous-
ing organizations. "The benefits are
your work," Langguth says. "People
stay because they're committed to the
community."
But many executives worry that
low salaries and meager benefits have
created a workforce composed almost
exclusively of people with second
incomes, the young and idealistic,
and the poor helping the poor. For the
most part, the workers come from a
distinctly minority and low-income
population. About 37 percent of the
employees at social service and hous-
ing organizations are African Ameri-
can, more than 20 percent are Latino,
and two-thirds are women. There are
no studies showing how many are
single parents or primary wage-earn-
ers in their households, but most
people in the field know colleagues
who fit into these categories.
Employers also worry that they
can't satisfy young newcomers' needs
for very long. "They have to leave the
agency to make any money," says
Nancy Wackstein, director of the
Lenox Hill Neighborhood Association,
an Upper East Side settlement house.
Many of the organization's longest-
lasting workers, she says, are women
whose husbands work. She considers
the traditionally low salaries at non-
profit organizations a legacy of the
Nonprofit wages
aren't keeping up
with inflation.
days when social service, like nurs-
ing, was considered a "women's pro-
fession."
Just as teachers earn far less than
advertising executives and bankers,
social service workers have a low rung
on the ladder of American priorities.
"Society has ambivalent attitudes
about the poor, sick and helpless."
says Wackstein, "and those attitudes
are reflected in the value it places on
the people who help them."
Special Skills
Most workers' salaries and benefits
are determined by their organization's
contracts with government. For
instance, contracts from the city's
$20,000 a year who
can deal with issues of battering and
incest," says Karen Zelermyer of
Women In Need, a Manhattan group
that runs six shelters for homeless
women and their children. About two-
thirds ofthe women in the shelters are
victims of such assaults, she says.
Women In Need gets about 15 per-
cent of its $7.6 million budget from
private sources, and uses some of that
money to pay its 20 private counsel-
ors between $22,000 and $28,000.
Cooks and "family monitors", or se-
curity guards, get between $18,000
and $20,000.
But most groups don't supplement
paychecks. With over a hundred com-
munity-organizing groups in the city,
Langguth points out, "there's not a lot
of funding."
Double Whammy
From the end of the city's mid-
1970s fiscal crisis until 1990, city con-
tracts with nonprofits gave staffers
the same annual increases the city
gave to municipal unions. But that
policy ended two years ago, when the
Dinkins administration tried to limit
all raises for government and non-
profit employees to 1.5 percent. The
well-organized municipal unions, like
the United Federation of Teachers,
were able to fight for bigger raises,
mainly by convincing the city to al-
Iowa bit of creative bookkeeping with
their pension funds. But nonprofit
workers, almost all of whom have no
pension funds to toy with-like the
2,400 staffers in the city's senior cen-
ters-got stuck with the 1.5 percent
increase. That's a hit Bobbie Sackman
considers a "double whammy": these
employees not only have no pension
funds, but now their wages aren't even
keeping up with inflation.
The Council of Senior Centers and
Services is currently waging a cam-
paign to get government-funded pen-
sions for the employees of its member
groups. "If we strengthen our staff, we
can deliver better services," Sackman
argues. Mayor David Dinkins, she
adds, supported pensions for non-
profit workers in 1986 when he was
Manhattan Borough President.
While only three percent of non-
profit social service organizations offer
pension programs-mainly large
groups, like Brooklyn Catholic
Charities and Jewish Association for
Services for the Aged-that's only part
of the picture. One-quarter of the
service organizations offer either no
benefits or rudimentary health
insurance that only covers hospital-
ization.
In other words, there are often holes
that people can slip through-
especially older workers and those
who work for small organizations.
"We've been working without benefits
for 20 years," says Fran Barrett of the
Community Resource Exchange,
which provides technical support for
community-based organizations. "The
sector is just beginning to come around
and ask for them."
Weird Relations
But asking and getting are two
different things. Groups that depend
on city contracts don't necessarily

have much clout. And workers are
rarely unionized, although Local 1199
of the Hospital and Health Care
Employees Union has made some
inroads at groups like the Community
Service Society, the Lenox Hill
Neighborhood Association and a
number of city-owned, privately-run
mental health clinics.
Even the groups that are unionized
face strange dilemmas, says Local 1199
organizer Edgar Aracena-Brador,
"It's cheaper for
the government to
contract out social
services. "
because the union has to work side by
side with management in lobbying
the government for contracts, then
turn around and negotiate with
management on salary and benefit
issues. "It's sort of a weird relation-
ship," he concludes.
Union organizers say there's a
growing need to organize nonprofit
workers. For one thing, the sector is
growing as more money flows into
special government initiatives for
dealing with AIDS, homelessness and
infant mortality. And there is a great
deal of speculation among public
policy professionals-and prospective
SUPPORT SERVICES 'FOR NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
Writing D Reports D Proposals D Newsletters D Manuals D Program
Description and Justification D Procedures D Training Materials
Research and Evaluation D Needs Assessment D Project Monitoring and
Documentation D Census/Demographics D Project and Performance
Evaluation
Planning and Development D Projects and Organizations D Budgets
D Management D Procedures and Systems
Cali or write Sue Fox
710 WEST END AVENUE
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10025
(212) 222-9946
mayoral challengers-about the
benefits of privatization, which would
turn city-run programs and jobs over
to nonprofit groups. "It's cheaper for
the city government to contract out
social services," explains Carol Hunt,
head of the Jamaica Service Program
for Older Adults. "They don't have to
carry staff," she says, and they don't
have to worry about union demands
regarding pensions and benefits. The
city turned 64 senior centers over to
nonprofits in 1991-1992; Hunt's
organization picked up two, one in
the South Jamaica Houses and another
on Rockaway Boulevard.
Barrett says pitting nonprofits
against city workers is "completely
counterproductive .... That puts us in
a competitive situation, and it
shouldn't be that way."
Pay Attention
Like Mary Lattang, Ellie Montal-
bano worries about retiring into
poverty. "I come from the generation
of women that stayed home with kids,"
she says. Now 59, she didn't start
working until she was 41-and as a
result expects to get "something like
$500 or $600 a month from Social
Security."
"I don't think people understand
what it takes to run a senior center,"
she continues. "We provide all the
services. The seniors consider this
their home. They spend most of their
day here. When they have problems,
we're the ones they approach-
sometimes before they approach their
own families." It's time, she argues,
that the system started paying
attention to its workers' needs, too.
"Just listen to us. . .. And be a little
humane."
Matthei agrees. "The question of
how we value human beings has to be
part of our thinking," he says. "Until
we address those issues we're not
going to make much progress. We
may keep our jobs but we won't make
any progress." It's a problem both
nonprofits and for-profit companies
have to consider in philosophical and
political terms, he adds.
"I don't believe the problem is
just poverty," Matthei argues. "Ulti-
mately the problem is not the people
at the bottom. To talk about the cook
is not enough. You have to look at the
people on top. You have to focus on
wealth." 0
Steve Wishnia was an editor of the
Guardian newsweekly.
!

The National Community
Reinvestment Coalition's
1993
ANNUAL MEETING AND CONFERENCE
Advancing Community Reinvestment
WHERE: WASHINGTON, DC WHEN: FEBRUARY 23, 24 & 25
NCRC will host the largest gathering of nonprofit Community Reinvestment organizations ever
assembled. CRA organizations, advocacy groups, CDCs, CHDOs and others from around the country
will be on hand to move the national community reinvestment agenda forward.
WORKSHOPS
NCRC is committed to providing community groups with 'state-of-the-art' information and education
on a variety of community reinvestment issues. Including .......... .
Fundraising for community reinvestment efforts Loan consortia Understanding and influencing
the CRA examination process Business Lending Using HMDA data Consumer credit
counseling Rural CRA issues and strategies Comprehensive CRA organizing Civil Rights Laws
and other laws used to increase local lending CRA Agreements: what's in them and enforcement
monitoring Organizing local & state CRA coalitions Community Development Banks, Community
Loan Funds and Linked Deposits
MEET THE REGULATORS
NCRC will conduct its annual 'Interactive Session' which is a free flowing dialogue between CRA
activists, academics, bank regulators and secondary market representatives, discussing current and
relevant CRA issues. Conference attendees are given an opportunity to directly question participants.
TELL CONGRESS WHAT YOUR COMMUNITY NEEDS
A special Congressional Education segment, as part ofNCRC's Save CRA Campaign, will be conducted
on Capitol Hill. Leading bank legislators and their staff will be on hand to discuss relevant bank legislation
and the future of CRA in Congress. Conference participants will meet key Congresspeople and be asked
to encourage their own local Congresspeople to attend this event.
For further information please contact
NCRC, 1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite lOW, Washington, DC 20009
tel: 202.986.7898 fax: 202.986.7475
A Two-Way Street
The New York City Health Crisis Coalition is creating a
"community-public partnership" at Kings County Hospital.
BY CHRISTOPHER ZURA WSKY
I
n the midst of a demonstration two years ago protesting
the lack of basic services at Kings County Hospital, a
Haitian woman, screaming at the top of her lungs, ran
out of the hospital. No one knew what was wrong.
Because the distraught woman spoke only Creole, a
community organizer present at the rally, Florence Elie-
Duke, translated her story for the hundreds assembled
outside.
"It turned out that her niece, who was pregnant, wasn't
feeling well and decided to go to the hospital to find out
what was wrong," remembers Elie-Duke, co-founder of
the Haitian Task Force on Housing. "A nurse realized that
the woman was about to give birth and told her to wait
while she went to get a doctor. But apparently, she stayed
away too long. When the nurse got back, the niece and the
baby were both dead."
That incident, reported on Moment Creole, a popular
Haitian radio program, shocked Central Brook! yn' s Haitian
community of 250,000 and helped reinforce the resolve of
local activists fighting for a community voice in the
operation of the city's largest public hospital.
"Callous, cynical and ungodly activities happen in
these hospitals because the community doesn't know
about it," says Sidique Wai, co-chairperson of the Brodk-
lyn-based New York City Health Crisis Coalition. "Our
issue is public accountability, [and] the main focus is on
institutional accountability."
The Health Crisis Coalition, which is bringing together
hospital patients, activists, academics and medical pro-
fessionals, is working to promote community-based health
care and an open decision -making process at Kings County
Hospital-arguably the city's most overwhelmed and cha-
otic medical institution. It's a task about as simple as, say,
solving the Middle East peace crisis.
5
idique Wai is an extremely polite, even gracious,
gadfly. Impeccably dressed in suit and tie, the wiry
43-year-old attends many of the board meetings of
the Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) , which over-
sees New York's municipal hospitals. When the time
comes for public comment, Wai stands, greets the board
members by name. thanks them individually and collec-
tively for listening to him. praises them for their progress
to date-and unleashes the full force of his rhetorical fury.
Eyes occasionally roll while Wai underscores his
concerns, but after four years of public speaking, letter-
writing, proposal-writing. press conferences, account-
ability sessions. protests and private meetings, Wai and
the New York City Health Crisis Coalition are starting to
make inroads into the behind-closed-doors world of policy-
making for the city's public hospitals.
"They have an important role as far as I'm concerned.
They make us aware of what we need to know from the
community," says Julio Bellber, an HHC board member
!

who runs the William F. Ryan Community Health Center.
He adds, "We're dealing with big issues, heavy players, big
dollars .... They're trying to do the grassroots organizing
that's necessary to develop some political clout."
"They've been a very vocal presence from the commu-
nity-and we listen to them," adds Dr.
Benjamin Chu, the acting executive
director of Kings County Hospital.
realized that well-organized, vocal groups can make an
impact that extends far beyond their "advisory" capacity.
To this end, the coalition has formed a planning partici-
pation proposal, The Kings Care Plan, which would in-
clude seven community boards, representing 1.8 million
people, in the operation of Kings
County Hospital. The plan would also
create a Community Policy Institute,
The coalition is a city-wide organi-
zation of more than a dozen commu-
nity groups, including Brooklyn orga-
nizations like the Bedford-Stuyvesant
Volunteer Ambulance Corps and the
800 Eastern Parkway Block Associa-
tion, as well as neighborhood groups
from Roosevelt Island and Upper Man-
hattan and city-wide groups like ACT-
UP. It was created with support from
Community Service Society staffers,
especially Roger Hayes, who had spent
Kings County
is arguably the
city's most
chaotic medical
which Wai describes as "the academic
operational arm that will remain not
just for one study or report, but will be
involved in siting, oversight and de-
livery of services."
Another focus is a proposal from
The Doctors Council for reorganizing
the delivery of medical services at the
hospital and establishing a primary
care network for Central Brooklyn. The
Doctors Council plan includes 10 "sat-
institution.
years doing health care organizing in
Washington Heights. Hayes, who no
longer works at CSS, is now co-chairman ofthe coalition.
A key voice from the Brooklyn community is Enid Ford,
the district manager of Community Board Nine in Crown
Heights and the chairperson of Kings County Hospital's
Community Advisory Board. She works side-by-side with
long-time public health advocates like Sidney Socolar, a
retired bio-physicist, and Robb Burlage, a New School for
Social Research expert on the city's affiliation agreements
between hospitals and medical schools. There's also the
Committee of Interns and Residents, which represents
medical students working at city hospitals, and The Doc-
tors Council, the union for hundreds
of the doctors in city-run hospitals.
Dr. Barry Liebowitz, the president
of The Doctors Council, describes what
is being buil t in Central Brooklyn as "a
wheel with three spokes-community
activists, health care academicians,
and medical professional groups."
With all three forces working together,
the wheel is developing an alternative
vision for health care at Kings County
Hospital.
ellite" clinics, one located in each zip
code area served by Kings County, to
make it easier for residents to see a
doctor. Such a system, it is hoped, would lighten the load
of nearly 200,000 patients that descend annually on Kings
County Hospital's emergency rooms.
Early preventive treatment would go a long way toward
reducing rates of breast cancer, cervical cancer, and tuber-
culosis hospitalization. That last item cost Kings County
Hospital $10,195 for an adult, on average, and $4,788 per
child.
Perhaps nowhere in the city is the need for primary care
more pressing than in the neighborhoods served by Kings
County. During the measles epidemic of 1990, about one-
fifth of 1,000 reported measles cases
at the hospital required hospitaliza-
tion. Twenty children died. Improved
access to primary care would have
allowed more timely immunizations
which, in turn, may have prevented
those deaths.
T
here's no way that the Health
Crisis Coalition can waltz into
hospital board meetings and get
their proposals adopted immediatel y.
They have to protest and politick,
finding spots in the decision-making
process where they can poke their
toes through the door.
Some may wonder why the coali-
tion is necessary, since all municipal
hospitals have community advisory
boards, which are meant to ensure
ground-level participation in hospital
affairs. But the boards, which are com-
prised of between 24 and 35 people,
are appointed by the president ofHHC
and the borough president and have a
reputation for rubber-stamping instead
of challenging authority.
Ford, who became chairperson of
the Kings County Hospital Commu-
Eyes and Ean Open: Benjamin Chu, acting
executive director of the Kings County
Hospital, says he listens to the coalition.
There are two key areas where the
coalition is making an impact. One of
them is Kings County Hospital 's re-
building plan, which will create an
entirely new hospital complex with
$900 million of city and state capital
funds. The original plans called for a
nity Advisory Board two years ago, admits she was "not
too happy" when she realized how little the board was
able to accomplish. "The boards are limited by the policies
and guidelines set by the Health and Hospitals Corpora-
tion," she says, explaining that their input is ad visory, and
their decisions can be ignored. Still, from her work at
Community Board Nine in Crown Heights, Ford says she
few basic health care clinics at the hospital-but lobbying
from the New York City Health Crisis Coalition and
follow-up from the state forced the hospital to go back to
the drawing board to develop a network of community-
based clinics instead.
"We approved the [rebuilding] plan, with a contin-
gency" that the primary care portion needs to be changed,
explains Carlos Perez from the
state Department of Health.
Perez also sits on the New York
State Hospital Review and Plan-
ning Council, which decides
whether the state should re-
lease capital funds for hospital
rebuilding projects. "Quite
frankly, that's a result of the
Health Crisis Coalition's in-
volvement. They've kept the
discussion focused on primary
care."
The other process where the
coalition is starting to partici-
pate is the affiliation contract
negotiations between Kings
County Hospital and its neigh-
bor across Clarkson A venue,
the State University of New
York Health Science Center, a
medical school and teaching
hospital, which is better known
as Downstate. The link between
the two institutions is like a
dysfunctional marriage-but
changing the terms of the affili-
ation contract is easier said than
done.
The city paid more than $20
million to Downstate in 1991
and in return Downstate
doctors staff Kings County
Hospital's departments of
psychiatry, radiation oncology, and radiology. Downstate
doctors also work in other departments, including the
emergency room, on an informal basis. Affiliations may
seem like a simple exchange of money for services, but
there's no independent organization overseeing the
contract, and Downstate has come under fire for failing to
provide high quality care at Kings County. This became
international news two years ago, when stabbing victim
Yankel Rosenbaum died while waiting
for treatment in the Kings County
Hospital emergency room.
ing and research, while mu-
nicipal hospitals have a man-
date to meet the more basic
needs of poor people, many of
whom use the hospital emer-
gency room as their family doc-
tor.
Despite these misgivings, al-
ternatives to the affiliation ar-
rangements aren't getting much
attention from City Hall-even
as contract negotiations be-
tween Kings County Hospital
and Downstate are moving
ahead. A master affiliation con-
tract, which serves as a frame-
work for all of the city's hospi-
tal affiliation contracts, will be
finalized by HHC "very soon,"
according to spokesperson Mari
Gold. HHC oversees all of the
city's public hospitals and is
negotiating the affiliation con-
tract with Downstate on behalf
of Kings County.
In addition, the HHC board
gave the go-ahead in October
for Downstate to implement a
bigger, far more detailed affili-
ation agreement at Kings
County, meaning that Down-
state doctors will serve in all
the medical departments. The
hospital and Downstate signed
a memorandum of understanding that sets a deadline of
June 30, 1993 for finalizing the deal. The pricetag: some-
where in the neighborhood of $60 million.
The memorandum represents some success-and some
failure-for community health advocates. Despite all the
problems with Downstate, it expands the affiliation con-
tract, which some perceive as a step backward. "Experi-
ence with Downstate's current partial affiliation with
Kings County shows that Downstate is
not inclined, or equipped, to assume
Enid Ford explains how she came to
understand the central importance of
the affiliation contract. "With the death
of Yanke 1 Rosenbaum ... everyone was
blaming Kings County. But the papers
started exposing the fact that the doc-
tors there were credentialed and as-
signed there through Downstate. We
started looking at the affiliation con-
tract and we started to realize Kings
County was being controlled by Down-
"They've kept
the discussion
focused on
the mission of a city hospital." says
Dr. Daniel Lawlor, president of the
Committee of Interns and Residents.
However, others say that the memo-
randum of understanding and a more
open negotiation process for the affili-
ation contract are an important im-
provement from the past. "We're try-
ing to build in safeguards. We want to
involve the community" because "we
know there's a history of distrust,"
primary care."
state."
She says the New York City Health
Crisis Coalition is trying to ensure accountability in the
relationship, and to create "a two-way street" between the
two institutions.
Many health care activists question the wisdom of
affiliation contracts, arguing that the interests of medical
schools work at cross purposes with the needs of public
hospitals; the medical schools are concerned about teach-
14/JANUARY 1993/CrrY UMITS
says Chu from Kings County Hospital.
"We want to build in very firm ac-
countability-right now there is no
firm system and there's a lot of ambiguity about who is
responsible for what."
Ron Najman, a spokesperson for Downstate, adds that
the new contract will be a way of "measuring how each
party is living up to the terms of the agreement. Which I
think everyone agrees, in principle, is a good thing and is
truly needed here."
.
~
..

The memorandum itself is a step forward-for starters,
it's written in very clear, straightforward language instead
ofimpenetrable legalese. Both the hospital and the school
acknowledge that "the current man-
up to the comprehensive affiliation contract.
"He said the master plan was still being worked out, but
that I would be at the table for the plan with Kings County
and Downstate, " says Ford. "This is
what I'm waiting for." ner in which professional services are
provided at [Kings County] has resulted
in unsatisfactory lines of reporting and
accountability," and another section
details the need to "to facilitate the
development of a community-based
primary care network" through a joint
planning process that "incorporates
community input. "
"This is historic."
Wai notes, "The process doesn't
move too fast , but this is historic. We
have shown that if the community
cries loud enough and makes it their
business to be involved, then the sys-
tem will be able to accommodate that
involvement."
Another important advance comes in the form of a
promise made by Dr. Billy Jones, the HHC president. He
told Enid Ford of the Community Advisory Board that she
could participate in the nuts and bolts negotiations leading
Burlage adds, "There's a lot of talk about public-private
partnerships. But what we're trying to do here is create a
community-public partnership." I I
Christopher Zurawskywrites frequen tly on medica1 topics.
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MALIGN NEGLECT
By Steve Mitra
C
orlandress and Lucille Pittman used to spend warm
summer nights sitting in the courtyard of the Willard J.
Price Houses as their granddaughter played nearby. It
was the mid 1970s, and they had just moved out of an
overcrowded Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone into the brand
new, four-building apartment complex. Their home had all
the latest conveniences and rents were subsidized by the
federal government for low-income families. "It used to be
very nice," Lucille says, a little wistfully.
The complex, named after the first African American
lawyer in Brooklyn, is now a place of fear instead of pride.
Corlandress, a 69-year-old retiree from the city's Human
Resources Administration, offers a tour through the grim
corridors. He points to bullet holes in doors, tiny red-capped
crack vials littering the stairwell, and graffiti splattered across
the walls. "You expect me to feel safe here?" he asks. In some
apartments, the floor tiles have long-since peeled away, ex-
posing raw concrete; in others, rainwater seeps in through
ceilings, kitchens are falling apart and tenants describe win-
ters huddled next to their ovens, trying to stay warm. Outside,
the playground is bereft of seesaws and swings.
The Pittmans no longer go outside after dark, even on warm
nights. They sit home, mostly watching television, their
conversations interrupted by occasional bursts of gunfire
from the courtyard and the streets.
"This is not how I want to live," Pittman says with a quiet,
angry edge to his voice. "Yet, you're paying for this," he adds.
"We're all paying for this. This building is run on government
money from our taxes."
Owners of federally-subsidized housing are meant to provide "decent, safe
and sanitary" apartments for their low-income tenants. But lax federal
oversight allows many landlords to let their buildings rot
!
,.,
T
he Willard J. Price Houses benefit from substantial
federal subsidies-more than $1 million a year in
rent money, and mortgage subsidies worth hundreds
of thousands of dollars more. Under federal law , oversight
of the complex is the responsibility of the federal Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Development CRUD). The
development is one of over 500 projects with about 100,000
apartments in New York City that have similar subsidies.
They are all overseen by HUD and many have fallen into
severe disrepair.
Every month, landlords and managers of HUD-
supported buildings nationwide get tens of millions of
dollars in market-rate rents, most of it paid by HUD under
a rental subsidy program called Section Eight. In return,
the landlords are supposed to provide "decent, safe and
sanitary" housing for low-income people. But a City Limits
investigation of 19 HUD-subsidized developments
managed by a single management company-Brooklyn-
based BPC Management Corporation-found that while
some buildings are well-maintained, a significant number
fail to live up to their commitment.
The investigation found seriously deteriorated
conditions in eight of the 19 properties. These eight are
owned by six different landlords, each of whom hired BPC
as a manager. But the prob-
lems in BPC-managed
buildings are not unique.
"In almost every HUD
building, there's some sort
of problem," says Jimmy
Carter, chairman of the
Citywide Coalition of
Tenants in Federally-
Assisted Housing. "Man-
agement is getting tax
dollars and they're not
doing their job."
Some tenants in New
York have begun an organ-
izing campaign to force
RUD to make landlords and
managers ensure high qual-
ity maintenance of these
buildings, which are a key
housing resource. But after
12 years of Republican rule,
the local HUD office has
only five inspectors to over-
see 1,400 developments.
The problem is nation-
wide. "There are a signifi-
cant number of [HUD-
assisted] buildings-most
people believe over a third
of the stock-with serious
financial or maintenance
problems, " says Larry Yates
of the National Low Income
Housing Coalition. HUD's
inability to ensure decent
housing requires imme-
diate attention, advocates
say.
Bach, an expert on HUD-assisted buildings. from the
Community Services Society.
Advocates say the necessary changes are hardly earth-
shaking and Carter's message to HUD is painfully simple:
"Just enforce your own guidelines."
T
he tenants of Willard J. Price have been fighting to
improve their homes for more than a decade. Their
fruitless battle-and their inability to move the federal
bureaucracy despite clearly documented abuses by
management-is emblematic of problems in HUD-
subsidized buildings citywide.
Corlandress Pittman has a stack of papers documenting
three years of correspondence between the development's
tenants association and HUD, including complaints about
BPC. Of 10 HUD reports on the complex since 1985, five,
including the latest, show "below average" conditions at
the project, according to David Buchwalter, chief of loan
management at the regional HUD office in New York. And
the city's housing inspectors have tallied 697 building
code violations in two of the four buildings, including 79
termed "immediately hazardous".
A recent HUD report also
found potentially hazard-
ous conditions in kitchens,
defective wiring, clogged
plumbing fixtures, and
broken doors, among other
things, and cited major
security problems. Guards
"were unable to enter to
patrol the buildings in the
evening hours because they
were not provided with
keys to the front door," the
official wrote. "Evidently,
such an oversight defeats
the purpose of paying for
the security services," the
report continues, and is a
"misuse of funds."
Yet the reports appear
to have had little or no
impact. Despite many years
of official criticisms from
the agency's inspectors,
HUD, far from taking
punitive action, has
granted four rent increases
to the project' s owners
during the late 1980s, vastly
increasing the rental
subsidy.
"Clearly, something has
got to change," says Victor
Eftn t. KItchen Sink: City housing inspectors have tallied 697 code
violations in two of the buildings at Willard ,. Price Houses.
"It seems like instead of
looking out for tenants'
interests, it's more like, let's
see how we can help out
the management," says
Carter. He adds: "Right
now, their inspection
follow-up is a telephone
call to the landlord."
Buchwalter counters
iI/JANUARY 1993/CITY UMnS
that he does more than make phone calls, but admits, "On
this one, the owner hasn't lived up to his requirements.
We're going to have to consider stepping up enforce-
ment."
But Joseph Bailey, an attorney representing Enoch Starr
Restoration, the nonprofit owner of the development,
appears oblivious to Buchwalter's concerns. He defends
BPC as an "efficient management team" that "satisfied
HUD," and places the blame for problems squarely on the
tenants. "They are criminals," he says. "These people
ought not to be enjoying the subsidies .... They don't
deserve it."
Yet serious administrative problems at Price Houses
raise further questions about BPC's ability to manage the
property. Enoch Starr Restoration receives $1.74 million
annually for the 192-unit complex-an average of $9,072
per apartment. A comparable project in East New York
that is in excellent condition (see sidebar, page 22) receives
an average of only $7,423 per apartment. In addition, the
owners and managers of Price Houses are six years behind
in paying $32,535 in real estate taxes, according to city
Department of Finance records, and the city has a lien on
the development because of the debt.
High Cost, Low Return
City Limits looked into the circumstances of a sample
of HUD-subsidized housing citywide, and found a
trend similar to the problems experienced by the tenants
of the BPC Management
T
he Section Eight program wasn't supposed to end up
like this. Created by Congress in 1974, the federal
subsidy program's goal is to provide housing for low
and moderate-income families. The system was set up to
provide assistance to the recipients, but in many
properties, the subsidies go to the buildings, not the
tenants. There are more than 500 developments with this
sort of Section Eight attached subsidy in New York City
today.
In these buildings, many developers receive what
amounts to a triple subsidy, thanks to benefits from earlier
government programs. Some projects-including the Price
Houses-receive subsidies that cover most of the interest
payments on the buildings' mortgages. And the federal
government insures the mortgage on many of the projects
it subsidizes.
What's more, under Section Eight, developers were
guaranteed a market-rate rent roll for about 15 years or
more, regardless of market conditions. Tenants are expected
to pay between 10 and 30 percent of their income in rent,
while HUD subsidizes the rest. For example, the rent for
the Pittmans' two bedroom apartment is $767. Of this,
Pittman pays $192; the rest comes from HUD. If operating
because of unpaid property taxes and water and sewer
charges. Also, 13 of the 30 are delinquent in tax payments
to the city-a delinquency rate nearly three times as
high as the citywide average of 16 percent for all
apartment buildings, cooperatives and condominiums.
Some of the buildings, like Pueblo Nuevo's 172-apart-
ment complex on Stanton
Corporation. While some
buildings are in relatively
good condition, others are in
both physical and financial
crisis. The findings bear out
advocates' concerns about
lax government enforcement
of federal regulations in
buildings where rents are
high and tax dollars subsi-
dize the mortgage, insurance
and operating costs.
Delinquency rate on payments of city taxes by 30
randomly chosen, HUD-subsidized complexes,
YS. delinquency rate of all aparbnent buildings,
cooperatives and condominiums citywide.
Street in lower Manhattan,
owe as much as $127,000 to
the city, all in real estate taxes
and related charges, accord-
ing to the Department of
Finance.
50% ,--------,-----------,
Of 39 randomly chosen
developments, 14 have city
housing code inspection
reports revealing hundreds
of violations. In one, the 197-
unit Crotona Park East Coop-
erative in the Bronx, inspec-
tion reports list 79 "immedi-
ately hazardous" violations,
such as exposed wiring, no
hot water or heat in some
apartments, and broken walls
and ceilings. Another project,
at 2005 and 2007 Davidson
"There's no reason why,
with the money from the
government that they are
getting, that these units are
not fixed up," says Roberta
Youmans of the National
Housing Law Project in
Washington, D.C. "There's no
reason they shouldn't be as
10%
good as housing on the private market."
HUD-Subsidlzed
The City Limits study took random samples of the
451 developments where apartments are covered by
Section Eight rental subsidies and where mortgages are
insured by the federal government. The insurance
guarantees payment of the mortgage if the owner
defaults.
Of 30 developments whose city financial records
City Limits explored, three are listed as in rem, meaning
the city has moved to take control of the property
Citywide
A venue in the Bronx, has an
average of five housing code violations per apartment,
a high number by any standard but enormous consider-
ing the market-rate rents that HUD and the tenants pay.
Without question, most of the HUD-subsidized
properties are in better shape than the thousands of
decrepit tenements that dot the blocks of Harlem,
Central Brooklyn and the South Bronx. Yet rents in
these subsidized properties range from $600 per
apartment to $1,200 and more. In many cases, it's a high
cost for a very low return. l.J Andrew White
costs increase, landlords can petition HUD for a rent
increase.
All of these factors make Section Eight properties
extremely safe investments, according to Yates of the
Low-Income Housing Coalition. "I can literally count the
number of defaults on Section Eight properties on my
fingers," he says.
Under the agreement with HUD, landlords are expected
to maintain decent conditions in return for all the assistance
they get. HUD's role, Buchwalter says, is to monitor the
buildings and make sure
landlords are fulfilling
these goals. HUD tries to
inspect each building "at
least once a year" he says,
and when conditions are
found to be unsatisfactory,
the agency tries to work
with the landlords to cor-
rect them. HUD has several
means to ensure compli-
ance, including litigation,
withholding payment, not
granting rent increases,
and, in extreme situations,
taking over the projects that
have federally-insured
mortgages. But since the
early 1980s, HUDhas rarely
taken over buildings in
New York City, Buchwalter
says.
Unlike the tenants of
Price Houses, residents of
many buildings say they
are afraid to challenge their
landlords through an
organizing campaign.
The Citywide Coalition
of Tenants in Federally-
Assisted Housing is work-
ing to counter that fear, and
to demand accountability
from landlords, managers
and HUD.
O
wners' and managers' neglect has resulted in deterio-
rating conditions at many developments across the
city. Willard J. Price is one of the HUD-subsidized
projects in the worst shape. The other seven housing
developments where City Limits found poor conditions
include:
Prospect Heights Rehab at 781 Washington Avenue in
the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn. While there are
many physical problems with plumbing and leaks, the
biggest problem for tenants
is the lack of security. One
tenant, Inez Cooper, says
that on weekend nights
people smoke crack in the
stairwells, light fires in gar-
bage cans, and terrorize
residents.
"Once people come back
from work, they're in for
the night," she says. "I don't
even allow my sons and
daughters to go out after
eight o'clock."
City inspection reports
list 16 immediately hazard-
ous code violations, and a
total of 83 violations in the
63-unit building. A HUD
inspection report dated
August 28, 1992, found
widespread evidence of
vandalism in the building,
giving it an overall rating
of "below average." On the
ground floor, only one
window has security bars;
others have been smashed
in.
According to a rent
schedule obtained from
HUD, the annual rental in-
come from the property is
$733,644. A one-bedroom
>- rents for $834 a month and
~ two-bedrooms go for $906
US and $1,076. HUD docu-
:.:: ments show that one of the
The Coalition's work
mirrors a move toward
tenant empowerment with-
in HUD itself, dictated by
the department's outgoing
secretary, Jack Kemp. Two
years after taking office in
1989, Kemp revamped
A Call to Action: Jimmy Carter. chairman of the Citywide Coalition of
Tenants in Federally-ASSisted Housing. demands that HUD enforce its
own guidelines.
partners in the firm that
owns the building-Pros-
pect Heights Associates-
is Philip Rosenberg, an
owner ofBPC Management.
policy in an effort to strengthen tenants' ability to demand
improvements in their homes. His new program set out
guidelines demanding that HUD's regional offices rate
man-agers and landlords on their responsiveness to tenant
concerns, and, in cases where management is intractable,
HUD officials now have authorization to remove manage-
ment or even take the property from the owner. However,
coalition leaders say the program-the Comprehensive
Multi- family Servicing Program-raised hopes, but
failed to deliver real change.
Now, says Jimmy Carter, the coalition just wants "HUD
to do its job according to the letter ofthe law."
Rosenberg did not return several phone calls requesting
comment.
Medgar Evers Houses at 600-630 and 701-755 Gates
A venue in Bedford Stuyvesant. Even though HUD's physi-
cal inspection and management reports found the build-
ings to be satisfactory, the row of brick buildings is bleak
inside and tenants contend with many problems.
The front door to tenant Edna Gurley's building swings
open without a lock; the rear door is missing altogether.
Graffiti covers hallways and the elevator, and the play-
ground is a mess of broken steps with large gaping holes
the owner in HUD documents, with Henry A. Roth listed
as general partner. Roth, who has been found guilty of
tenant harassment in the past, did not return repeated
calls. Buchwalter admits the building has problems.
"We're not satisfied. We're following up," he promises.
Sixth AYenue Rehab II at 602 44th Street and 4403-4409
Sixth Avenue in Sunset Park. Tenant Carmen Gonzalez
says drug dealers frequent her building in the evenings,
making it unsafe for residents. Indeed, the front door
swings open freely. "They come from the outside," she
says. "And they go straight to the roof and do drugs.
Sometimes I'm here, and it's night, and I'm afraid .... We
have no security."
A look inside another apartment reveals horrendous
conditions: almost the entire floor of the kitchen has large
holes, exposing concrete. Tenant Kimberly Penn says she
has complained repeatedly to management to fix the
problems, to no avail.
A HUD management review report rates the building
"below average," citing maintenance, security and finan-
cial management problems. The 28 units with rental
subsidies yield an annual rent roll of about $360,000-
$904 for a one-bedroom and $1,035 for a two-bedroom.
Yet the property is listed as in rem by the city's Depart-
ment of Finance-meaning the city is moving to take
possession of the buildings-because of an unpaid, 30-
month-old debt of $21,497 in water and sewer charges.
Henry A. Roth is listed as the general partner of the firm
that owns the project on HUD documents.
One Project That Works
At the junction of Pitkin and Pennsylvania avenues
in East New York, in a depressed area surrounded by
new, single and two-family
homes, rise the solid brown-
and-yellow buildings of Grace
Towers. It is one HUD-subsi-
dized housing development
that works.
The 168-unit project is
owned by the Grace Baptist
Church through a nonprofit
corporation called the Grace
Housing Development Fund
Co., Inc. Reverend Jacob
Underwood, head of the cor-
poration and pastor of the
church, begins a tour of the
complex in the boiler room.
W
hile owners bear final responsibility for any project,
it is the management companies that deal with the
buildings on a daily basis: they collect the rent, file
the paperwork, maintain and secure the building and
respond to tenants' complaints. While their administra-
tive fees are regulated by HUD, other fees and expenses are
negotiated with the owners of the project. Major improve-
ments or repairs are financed from a reserve fund into
which a small portion of the monthly rent is deposited.
BPC Management, with its headquarters at 80 Livingston
Street in Brooklyn, is also known as New England
Management Corporation. Seymour Maslow, a vice-
president at BPC/New England, denies that BPC is to
blame for conditions in the buildings it manages. He
admits that conditions are "not something we're proud
of," but blames vandalism for all the problems.
"It costs a hell of a lot more to manage a subsidized
building than a regular building," Maslow says. "You
need more security, theft is more, you have vandalism ... .I
could end up spending $1,000 per unit just to keep the
locks on." Beyond that, Maslow refuses to comment. He
also failed to respond to a faxed list of queries about
specific buildings.
But discussions with people who were close to the
company a few years ago reveal unanswered questions
about the organization. The company was founded a
dozen years ago as a joint venture between the Bedford-
Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, a nonprofit commu-
nity development organization, and a for-profit company
called Progressive Management, owned by Philip
community in the 1960s, applied for money through
the Model Cities program and got $4.6 million from
federal, state and local sources. By 1972, the project was
complete. Today, Grace Towers still looks new. Secu-
rity guards patrol the grounds seven nights a week.
''I'm really thankful this is
one of the good ones," says
Maxine Simmons, a long-time
tenant in the building.
"I've been in boiler rooms Sbte at GnN:e: Reverend Jacob Underwood and his HUD-
where you can't walk," he says subsidized development in East New York.
The reason Grace Towers
works while others have failed
has a lot to do with Under-
wood's involvement in the
project. For the first eight
years, Grace Church managed
the project. Underwood
didn't hire BPC until the early
1980s, and then only because
the paperwork got over-
whelming, he says. At the time
BPC was hired, Underwood
says, he reached an agreement
' with Philip Rosenberg that
the day-to-day tasks of man- in the nearly spotless base-
ment. "A boiler room in a building is like the kitchen
of a house-it tells you a lot about it." Although the
boilers are humming softly, he says they will need
replacement soon.
As he shows the rest of the building, with waxed
floors and rarely a sign of graffiti, he gives a brief
history. Underwood saw the need for housing in the
agement would be handled by people picked by Under-
wood.
"You've got to be involved like I am," he says.
"You've got to have a good super. You've got to know
what's breaking down. You have to have the right mix
of tenants. You've got to put money into preventive
maintenance." 0 Steve Mitra
J
".
. '\
I'
t
f
,
fends HUD's actions
over the years, and por-
trays the option of pun i-
tive action against land-
lords as a double-edged
sword. "What can we
do? Cut off the subsi-
dies?" he asks. "What
about the people in the
projects?"
Rosenberg. For the first
few years, Bedford
Stuyvesant Restoration
pretty much "gave them
a free hand" in the man-
agement of the
nonprofit's housing de-
velopments, says
Clarence Stewart, vice-
president of Restoration.
But in 1986, when the
community organization
was in the midst of a
severe financial crunch
and took a long, hard
look at all the properties
it owned, it realized that
the "buildings were de-
teriorating," Stewart
says.
Trapped: Many tenants of HUD-assisted buildings say they would just like to
leave-if only they could find affordable housing somewhere else.
He also explains that
a shortage of inspectors
in his office limits his
enforcement ability. The
office has only five in-
spectors to cover 1,400
developments that are
subsidized by HUD in
one way or another,
meaning there are more
buildings per inspector "We started to ask
[BPCl why it is that doors and leaks weren't fixed for a
whole year," Stewart adds. "We had tenants sending us
letters of complaint." In 1989, Restoration decided to
dissolve the joint venture, and by 1991, all of Restoration' s
buildings had been turned over to other management
companies. Stewart disputes Maslow's claim that the
income from Section Eight buildings is insufficient to
maintain secure and decent homes, and describes it as "a
great deal."
Many advocates and tenants say owners and managers
of HUD-subsidized buildings could be taking rent money
and putting it in their own pockets. While such allegations
are very difficult to prove, BPC's management of the
Willard J. Price Houses shows at least one possible ex-
ample of abuse. Documents that Pittman obtained from
HUD show that in September, 1989, Maslow at BPC asked
HUD for $150,000 from the project's replacement reserve
fund to replace two boilers, an amount that a HUD inspec-
tor claimed" appears high" on a field trip visit report dated
September 21. On November 9,1989, Maslow wrote HUD
a letter stating that the total bill was $175,000 and that the
"remaining work was completed by the plumber." Yet just
days later, on November 30, the same field inspector
reported that "boiler installation is incomplete .... #2 boiler
is malfunctioning. . .. Recommend denial of remaining
balance until all work is satisfactorily completed."
Buchwalter admits that there is a possibility of wrong-
doing, but again doesn't answer specifically how he will
address the issue. "I'm very well aware that there are
differences between BPC and inspection reports, and
we're looking at it," he says.
T
enant organizers argue that if HUD were really con
cerned about conditions in federally-subsidized hous
ing, the agency would be far more vigilant and active
in enforcing its regulations. But HUD officials say they are
not to blame. "We don't own the projects. We don't
manage them. It's not fair to hold HUD solely respon-
sible," says Adam Glantz, spokesman for the regional
office of HUD.
"That's not to say that we aren't unhappy about condi-
tions in some of the projects," adds Buchwalter. He de-
than there are working days in a year.
When pressed about HUD's power to take control of a
development if conditions merit such a move, Buchwalter
says he prefers to work with landlords, not against them.
Virtually admitting that he is overwhelmed and under-
staffed, he says, "When you're dealing with the inventory
we have with the resources we have, I focus on how to get
things done."
I
na letter sent to HUD earlier this year, the National
Low-Income Housing Coalition based in Washington
lambasted the department's stance: "HUD has done
very little to combat the pervasive climate of fear and
intimidation that afflicts tens of thousands of low income
people and inhibits resident aspirations to own or other-
wise take charge of their lives."
Across the country, tenants and housing advocates are
finding fault with HUD's basic approach of working with,
rather than against, owners who have failed to maintain
their properties. They say the landlords need oversight,
not sympathy. "I see them as defrauding the government,"
says Yates of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Others concede that some of the problems at HUD are
the result of staff reductions in the 1980s. But they say
there's still no excuse for the agency's failure to follow up
their own inspection reports with enforcement proce-
dures that were established by Kemp, and hope the incom-
ing Clinton administration will take that step. "Yes, it will
be difficult," says Yates. "Yes, you'll have to take the
owners to court. But this way you'll shake up a lot of
owners" and force them to improve conditions.
Adds Victor Bach from the Community Service Soci-
ety: "There has to be an increased federal role. There has
to be serious attention given to housing stock developed
with millions of dollars of taxpayers money."
Lucille Pittman, who fears stepping out of her apart-
ment, has sunk into a state of quiet desperation after years
of waiting for conditions to improve. She says she would
like to move, if only she "could find something afford-
able." But her husband is adamant-and angry. "This is
my home," he says. "Why would I want to move? I just
want them to fix up the building." 0
By Ruth W. Messinger
Stop the Chaos!
T
he flap surrounding the Dinkins
administration's now-suspen-
ded decision to place 100 home-
less families in two Upper West
Side hotels is only the most recent-
and voluble-example of a problem
that has vexed the city for more than
a decade: finding places to shelter
homeless families and individuals.
The problem
may appear
intractable-
but it doesn't
have to be this
way.
Self-Made
Problems
A large part
of the difficulty
siting shelters
today is self-
made. Far too
often, shelter
...... ,.' Is t
...... "IIIII t.,
.......
plans are dreamed up by distant
bureaucrats making unilateral deci-
sions. These decisions are sometimes
based on the need to act quickly, and
communities are given little, if any,
role in planning what takes place.
In fact, using the term "planning"
may be too generous. Shelters are
frequently opened in a slapdash
manner, with planning saved for a
later date-some other time, some
other place.
Thus, it is no surprise that some of
the buildings housing the homeless
have become overcrowded and are
poorly run. Nor should it be a surprise
that many neighborhood residents
now react reflexively-Not In My
Backyard!-when they learn that the
city intends to place homeless singles
or families nearby.
The case of the Upper West Side
hotels was an all too typical example
of this phenomenon. The city
announced to a group of local elected
officials its intention to use the hotels
and move the families in rapidly, with
little attention to the needs of those
they were moving in, or anticipation
of the legitimate questions and
concerns of the community. Talking
City View is a forum for opinion
and does not necessarily reflect
the views of City Limits.
24/JANUARY 1993/CITY UMns
with elected officials like myself is
not sufficient-and it was three weeks
before the city met directly with com-
munity residents. The consequences
of dismissing neighborhood residents
was predictable. The longer the city
ignored the community, the more
virulent became the opposition to
placing families in the two hotels.
There's a better way to approach
this situation. In 1991, my office
worked with several Manhattan
community boards and successfully
found sites for homeless shelters, AIDS
hospices and other social service
facilities that often encounter local
opposition. These sites were found
through a process where elected
officials consulted local community
boards for meaningful advice and
input.
Upper West Side Success Story
One such example, ironically
enough, can be found just a few blocks
from the Upper West Side hotels that
elicited the recent storm of protest.
The West Side Intergenerational
Residence mixed permanent rooms
for senior citizens with transitional
housing for single-parent families, and
has become a model both for effective
programs for the residents and positive
relations with the surrounding
neighborhood. In East Harlem, the
city and a neighborhood group, Hope
Community, have developed a tran-
sitional shelter for the homeless
without a wrenching battle. And
scattered throughout northern
Manhattan, the Committee for the
Heights-Inwood Homeless has
smoothly opened five perma'nent
single-room-occupancy projects that
include people generally resisted by
neighborhoods-single adults with
mental illness.
Based on the successful siting of
these facilities, here's an outline of
how the planning process to site home-
less shelters or housing should work.
Once the city chooses a potential site,
it should immediately begin a process
of consultation and communication.
The best way to start is to promptly
inform local elected officials and the
community board, which should
quickly schedule a meeting with its
relevant subcommittee. After present-
ing its proposal, one of the very first
questions asked by the city should be
if community residents and elected
officials believe there are sites within
the neighborhood that would be better
suited for the homeless. If alternatives
are suggested, the city must give them
a thorough evaluation.
But the site selection is only one in
a series of issues that should be
discussed. Consultation should also
occur around the number and com-
position of the homeless population
in order to determine if there is
adequate school and recreation space
in the neighborhood. Community
residents may well have better insight
on the capacity of existing resources
than officials from outside the neigh-
borhood. Similarly, discussions
regarding the city's arrangements for
any needed social services at the new
facility also must be part of the process.
The city should have a nonprofit
service provider on tap and ready to
be on site before the homeless move
in, with the community granted the
opportunity to comment on the plan
and the adequacy of the proposed
services.
Give and Take
In an atmosphere of give and take,
this process can occur expeditiously
and the legitimate concerns of a
community addressed. At the same
time, elected officials can emphasize
the role and responsibility of
communities in providing shelter. It
is also an opportunity to reinforce the
fact that homelessness is a symptom
of poverty and not an automatic signal
of dysfunctional individuals or
families. All communities, rich and
poor, contain members who need
some social support. Responsible
action and a process of consultation
and communication can help break
down some of the stereotypes that
contribute to the NIMBY reaction.
In the Upper West Side debacle,
not only did the city squander the
support of those, like myself, who
recognize the community's responsi-
bility for the homeless and believe the
placing of families in the two hotels
can be feasible if properly planned,
buf it further damaged the admin-
istration's credibility for future
attempts to find shelter locations.
Instead of increasing hostility,
elected officials need to work in
partnership with communities and
mend the fences of distrust. If we
don't, all of us will suffer the conse-
quences of increased homelessness
and despair . ..J
G1JTSY.
IRCIS
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CITY LIMITS, 40 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
By Eric Weinstock
Chasing the Dragon
"Dragon Within The Gates: The Once
and Future AIDS Epidemic," by
Stephen C. Joseph, M.D., Carrol S-
GrafPublishers, Inc., 1992,272 pages,
$20.95, hardcover.
A
s a former New York City
bureaucrat, I should be happy
that ex-New York City Health
Commissioner Dr. Stephen
Joseph got the opportunity to become
a published author. But, after reading
"Dragon Within The Gates: The Once
and Future AIDS Epidemic," I under-
stand better why publishers prefer to
issue, "The Co-dependent Cot's Diet
and Exercise Book," rather than tomes
by former New York City officials.
Self Righteous Defense
While masquerading as a treatise
on the AIDS crisis, the book is really
Joseph's self-righteous defense of his
controversial tenure as Health Com-
missioner from 1986 to 1990. It is said
that no one ever loses an argument in
their memoirs. But Joseph manages to
do even that-despite throwing in his
unpublished "letters to the editor"
and several flattering articles written
about him.
Before I picked up the book, I knew
that Joseph had been a controversial
figure, much hated by AIDS activist
groups. I remembered the maelstrom
he generated when he halved the
estimate of the number of AIDS cases
in New York City. I believed then, as
I believe after reading his book, that
the decision was fully justified by the
numbers. However, by giving a blow-
by-blow account of every disagree-
menthe ever had, Joseph clearly shows
why he generated so much contro-
versy.
For instance, he writes that when
ACT-UP members disrupted one of
his meetings or press conferences, his
"tactic was to keep going and not let
them interrupt me." His attempt to
ignore them only underscored AIDS
activists' greatest concern: that society
was not paying attention to the crisis.
Joseph has only scorn for gay activists
who "politicized" the public health
response to the epidemic. What Joseph
never describes-and never really
seems to have-is an emotional reac-
tion to the AIDS epidemic.
The book does contain a useful
history of the epidemic in New York
City, although from the title, book-
jacket and introduction, potential
buyers are led to think that the scope
of the book is far wider. Throughout
the book, I kept waiting for-and never
discovered-a useful discussion of the
role of the federal government and the
public'S response to the crisis.
Taboo Behavior
Even Joseph's most basic analysis
of AIDS raises questions. He traces
the epidemic and how HIV came to be
spread among various risk groups,
Joseph was a
controversial
figure, much
hated by AIDS
activists.
likening AIDS to "the 20th century's
major epidemics of behavior: coronary
artery disease, lung cancer, and motor
vehicle death." But AIDS is different
from these diseases. People have heart
attacks, get cancer, and crash their
cars, but they don't necessarily die.
Many cancers are highly treatable,
many people live for 20 years or more
after a heart attack and most people
walk away from car accidents. But
even with various treatments, HlV-
positive people will die relatively
soon, unless a medical breakthrough
is made.
Because AIDS is transmitted mostly
through sex and intravenous drug-
use, blame, rather than caring and
sympathy is too often the public'S
response. The link of AIDS with taboo
behavior allows the ignorant and the
bigoted to separate those infected into
the "innocent" and those who are
"being punished." But AIDS can be
seen as a natural disaster, akin to a
hurricane or flood. Someone who
wants to avoid getting AIDS can lead
a celibate life. But he or she must also
avoid being a hemophiliac or a health
care worker, and must never need a
transfusion. In fact, it is no more
reasonable to expect people to avoid
one of the more 'blasphemous' ways
of getting infected-through sex-than
to expect people to stop driving. Just
like wearing a seat belt while driving,
using a condom while having sex
makes sense. However, I have never
heard someone say after a fatal auto
collision, "Well, I guess that's their
punishment for not wearing a safety
belt."
Throughout the AIDS epidemic,
society's response has been governed
in part by its bigotry against the
population groups most likely to get
the disease. When a hurricane strikes
Florida, resources are mobilized on a
national level and charitable contri-
butions flood in. The reason why the
"politicization" that Joseph so de-
plores took place--and the reason for
ACT-UP's rough tactics-is that, for
all the words and rhetoric, national
mobilization against the disease has
still not taken place.
Where's the Humanity?
Despite all these criticisms, Joseph's
good intentions sometimes show
through. He does seem to genuinely
care about saving lives, even though
it's in a clinical way-as a medical
doctor. Given that his methods were
often wrong; his motivation was still
honorable.
But all through the book, Joseph,
with his recitation of numbers and
facts, appears unconcerned with the
human side of the AIDS epidemic and
dismisses discrimination against HIV-
positive individuals as an important
issue. I wonder what Joseph would do
if he had a phone conversation like
the one I had recently. I was talking to
a friend who told me that a co-worker
of his was HIV-positive. I had met the
co-worker before, and said I wanted to
call him. "No, you can't. He doesn't
want anyone to know. I wasn't sup-
posed to tell you," my friend said. We
talked some more, and after a while,
the conversation ended. I hung up the
phone. Then I cried. =
Eric Weinstock is an economist and a
former city housing official.
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f?r !enants.".Detailed guide to city housing subsidy programs. Asso-
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cIty-owned, tenant managed building. Available in Spanish and En-
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again a Comprehensive Affordable Housing Strategy. Massachusetts
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The Resources Clearinghouse is supported by the Joyce Mertz,Gilmore Foundation.
Provocative Article
To the Editor:
I enjoyed reading Harry DiRienzo's
Cityview piece in the November 1992
issue ("Starting All Over Again"). As
a participant in the work of the Task
Force on City-Owned Property, I found
it stimulating and provocative.
I agree with Harry's observation
that political and societal issues have
not been adequately considered by
those of us trying to mobilize tenants
in response to the city's housing poli-
cies. To that end, we have to under-
stand the forces at the community
level that ultimately shape the actions
of tenants and community groups.
Community-based organizations
are very important in their neighbor-
hoods, responding to housing prob-
lems and many other needs. But I
don't think they can become the ana-
log of the Southern black churches
during the civil rights struggle, as
Harry argues they should. The sense
of moral outrage that emerged in the
post-World War II United States led to
the broad recognition of institutional-
ized racism as a violation of African
Americans' basic human rights. The
ci vil rights struggle deepl y questioned
the United States' social structure and
system of beliefs, first around race
and, with time, around a number of
other inequities. For a while, some
people believed that the movement
Motivate and
mobilize.
had fundamentally changed society.
But instead, social hierarchies
adapted to the changes and the process
of co-optation began. Community-
based organizations acting as local
surrogates for city government are just
one example of how the civil rights
movement really did not deliver the
far-reaching, systemic changes some
people expected.
It's useless to yearn for the move-
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ments of the past-or to assume that a
new movement should be like past
ones. Social transformation is an
evolutionary process. Not all of the
strategies that mobilized people in
the past are still relevant or effective.
We need to understand the present
and let this understanding determine
what actions to take. We need to re-
identify what can motivate and
mobilize people, including those
living in devastated communities, the
homeless, the hungry, the unem-
ployed. Right now, the capacity for
mobilization seems diminished
because of the impact of poverty and
the depressed economy on low income
people, and because of the way the
public sector has structured its
relationship with community-based
groups, tenants, and poor people in
general. Because of this, we need a
new dialogue.
As part of that dialogue, we must
revive and invent local institutions as
avenues for political participation. We
must listen, and not always think we
know what is best. Dialogue should
lead to understanding and action, not
division and dissolution. We must
have compassion and move beyond
simply responding to new city pro-
grams or policies.
We must deal with public agencies
in a different manner. Change must be
encouraged through open discussion
with them, despite the inevitable
frustration. Only by questioning their
assumptions can new ideas and
perspectives be introduced.
If people are not ready to mobilize,
they cannot be forced. Citizens are the
best judges of their situation, and their
movement must, first of all, respond
to their needs. At times, people may
need to remain quiet and do whatever
they must to survive.
Rather than longing for past move-
ments made rosy by the frustrations of
the present, it is more productive to
focus on the social and political forces
currently shaping people's lives. All
citizens need to work at understanding
their situation and, through this
understanding, inspire hope for
themselves and others that their
actions can change not only their lives,
but society. Then there might be a
movement.
Thanks to City Limits for serving as
a forum for ideas like those contained
in Harry's article.
Luis F. Sierra
Washington Heights
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PROJECT DIRECTOR. Oversight of NYC component of the Nat'l
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PART -TIME HOUSING SPECIALIST. Provide counseling and assistance
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Bronx, NY 10453.
PROJECT MANAGER. Real estate development consulting firm seeks
project manager with at least 2 years expo in real estate economics,
particularly housing finance, and governmental processing such as
NYC ULURP, CEOR, HPD-VBP, and NYS DHCR. Must be skillful
in Lotus 123. Experience in technical, environmental analysis a
plus. Resume, work samples and salary expectations to Paul
Ketterer, Housing Futures, Inc. 150 East 58th Street, NYC 10022.
MUTUAL HOUSING TRUST CONSULTANT. Experienced housing prof.
sought to help develop mutual housing trust to fulfill req. of a federal
grant. Candidate must know NYC mutual housing, expo in resident
and community-based organizing, good communication skills, grant
writing skills and know current government housing initiatives.
Resume to: E. Anthony Mackall, Mutual Housing Trust Project,
Housing Department, Community Service Society, 105 East 22nd
Street, Suite 817, NYC 10010. EOE.
EIGHT MONTH POSITION. Housing consultant firm seeks individual
with experience in HPD's tenant selection procedures for the
Vacant Building Program. Applicant will be responsible for all
aspects oftenant selection, self-motivated and very well-organized.
Position is full-time, temporary, beginning in mid-February. Salary
neg. Send letter and resume to: Housing Futures, 150 East 58th
Street, NYC 10022. Attn: Tenant selection position.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ORGANIZER. For Southwest Brooklyn tenants'
organization. Both should be fearless, committed, progressive,
energetic-with a sense of humor. Work entails lots of interpersonal
contact, public speaking, long and irregular hours. Field experience
preferred. Executive Director should know bookkeeping, adminis-
tration. Send info to: COLTON, 2262 86th St., Brooklyn, NY 11214
Bankers1iustCompany
Community Development Group
A resource for the non ... profit
development community
Gary Hattem, Vice President
280 Park Avenue, 19 West New York, New York 10017
Tel: 212A54,3487 FAX 454,2380
CRY UMITS/JANUARY 1993/31
PRESENTS
The Partnersh ip
for the Homeless
Growth, Transition, ~ange:
How Does This Affect Us?
What wi II the new Agency
for the Homeless mean to us?
Will a healthier economy
mean new directions?
How can we make a
difference?
January 30, 1993
ALL DAY (NO FEE,LUNCH PROVIDED)
THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
66 West 12th Street, New York, New York
Registration 8:45 AM
For more information call (212) 645-3444
ACTION
DAY
'95
h-
,-
.

City Limits Magazine, January 1993 Issue

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City Limits Magazine, January 1993 Issue

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January 1993 New York's Community Affairs News Magazine

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