City Limits Magazine, April 1980 Issue

CITY LIMITS
APRIL 1980
$1.50
VOL. 5 NO.4
End of the Road
RENEWAL PLAN AT CRITICAL STAGE
OVER DISPLACEMENT IN PORT CHESTER
by Bernard Cohen
Port Chester, N.Y.-She began puffing hard on the
first landing. By the time Elsie Sistrunk had climbed two
more flights past the dark walls tattooed with graffiti
and walked slowly into her apartment, she was gasping
for air. Without taking off her jacket, the 38-year-old
welfare mother, who suffers from asthma and epilepsy,
sat down at the kitchen table to wait for her breathing to
return to normal.
"I'm very sickly," she said as the late a.fternoon
sunlight brightened two tiny bedrooms where her six
children, ages 18 months to 18 years, were playing and
watching television. "I get all clogged up and can't
breathe," she continued. "I shouldn't be up here, but I
have no choice."
The Sistrunk family was moved by the Village of Port
Chester into the cramped five-room apartment-in a
building that one regional housing official called
"pretty deplorable"-over New Year's weekend after
being evacuated from the house in which they had been
living because of a dangerously malfunctioning boiler.
Village housing officials call the relocation of the
family temporary, but after three ' months they have
been unable to find a vacant apartment that is safe and
sanitary for the family to move into.
A near zero vacancy rate, no reeent housing develop-
ment to speak of and a growing burden of seriously
decayed and abandoned housing in Port Chester have
created an extremely tight market that is facing even
further pressure by a controversial "redevelopment"
plan that propels the Village into the national debate
over displacement.
Port Chester, with a population of 25,000, is a declin-
West Side of South Main Street in the heart of the redevelopment
area.
CITY LIM ITS/Apri I 1980
2
ing, urbanized community that borders Connecticut in a
largely suburban region know for its wealth. A thriving
place 20 years ago, the Village has lost major industries.
Outlying shopping centers have drawn off a lot of its
business. The South End, once a hub of activity, is filled
with slum housing, boarded up businesses, vacant lots
and people standing around. The Italian families that
populated the South End and who still dominate Village
politics have moved to other sections, replaced by lower
income blacks and Hispanics who make up approxi-
mately 13 per cent of the population.
The ticket to Port Chester's rebirth in the minds of
local officials is a $5.7 million plan to b r ~ n g light
industry and office space to a four-block area of the
South End. The Village received $500,000 in federal
Community Development funds in 1978-79 and
$450,000 in 1979-80 to pay for acquisition and clearance
of property to improve vehicular access to the redevel-
opment area. It has applied for $675,000 to continue the
work in 1980-81.
The redevelopment is expected to displace 170 -fami-
lies in all. An estimated 29 will be uprooted in the first
phase, scheduled for completion in September, 1980. To
date, 14 families have been relocated, according to 'offi-
cials. Between 1980 and 1982, another 60 families will
be moved and 85 more after 1982, according to present
plans.
Ever since the redevelopment plan was unveiled in
1977, community advocates have charged that the
Village has ignored its responsibility to insure that there
will be safe and sound replacement housing for all those
who are displaced. They have pressured the Board of
Trustees to come up with a relocation plan, written
letters to government review agencies opposing the use
of federal dollars for the redevelopment and organized
demonstrations.
The housing struggle is an integral part of a long
history of poor relations between successive Village
administrations and the minority community of Port
Chester. In 1968 and again in 1978, the Board of
Trustees washed its hands of renewal projects that
would have brought millions of dollars to the Village
rather than build ad<;litionallow income housing.
None of the Village trustees is black. A black candi-
date ran on a major party line for the first time in the
last election but lost by a small margin. Aside from one
member of the Port Chester Housing Authority Board,
no blacks hold any appointive position of power in the
Village. In 1977, Action for a Better Community, a co-
continued on page 16
INCLEMENT
WEATHERIZATION
The City of New York has been allocated $8
million in weatherization funds from the federal
Department of Energy through New York State.
This money, like previous weatherization money,
will have little impact on the low income families it
is supposed to serve, unless the regulations take a
new approach
The Department of Energy (DOE), recognizing
the problems created by the regulations, has
recently proposed changes that would raise the
maximum amount to be spent on each unit from
$800 to $1,000. DOE, recognizing the limitations on
CETA contracts, will allow ""eatherization funds to
be used for labor costs, where CETA is unavailable,
or needs to be supplemented. In those cases, DOE
now allows a maximum of $1,600 per unit to be
spent. We strongly support these changes in the
regulations and urge that they be put into effect as
quickly as possible.
The real problem with the weatherization
funding, however, has not been corrected, and still
stands in the way of an effective weatherization
program in New York City.
This problem lies in DOE' s basic approach in
providing the benefits to low income people. The
regulations require that 66 per cent of the building's
dwelling units be occupied or set aside for low
income persons-as defined by 125 per cent of the
poverty level established by the federal Office of
Management and Budget. The problem of certifying
these incomes is difficult enough. But it is com-
pounded by the fact that no building-without
tion 8 subsidies-can afford to have such a high
proportion of low income residents and remain eco-
nomically viable.
Recognizing this, the state has a "dem-
onstration" in New York City utilizing a higher base
poverty figure as defined by the federal of
Labor Statistics. Using this measure, a family of four
could earn a maximum of $10,250. Unfortunately,
BI,.S standards, too, define a building .that is not
economically viable. If the one-fourth of Income rule
is applied, the example family, can afford a
rent of $172 after utilities. The average Alternative
Management building, after being purchased by its
tenants will be charging more than $200 per month
for a apartment, and the typical private
landlord much more than that.
3
D.O.E.'s income requirements are unrealistic
and render weatherization program inoperable for
unsubsidized buildings. In the face of rapidly rising
rents driven by escalating fuel costs, a more ration-
al approach would be to weatherize any building in a
low income or Community Development-eligible
neighborhood that meets criteria that would insure
that the flow of benefits from lower fuel costs would
be used to hold down rents rather than increase
profits. In this way, buildings will remain affordable
for their low income residents.
This approach would provide more weatheriza-
tion to more units in a shorter period of time. It
would also reduce administrative costs and allow
the city to provide weatherization funds to those
buildings that offer the most housing opportunities
to low income residents, rather than struggling to
find a financially unviable building that meets
unrealistic income criteria.
We strongly urge the city to propose such an
approach to DOE.
To the editor:
Beginning in 1977 an effort was made
to seal up eight abandoned buildings on
6th St. between Avenues A & B on the
Lower East Side. Four were sacrificed to
arson and the damages of winter before
the city completed its task. A community
garden now stands on the lot formerly
occupied by a building that the Theatro
Ambulante had planned to adopt before it was burned
beyond saving. Out of these crises grew A Better Way-
26 black, Hispanic, and white, family and individual
4CITY LIMITS'
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City Limits (lSSN 0199-0330)
Editor ... .... . .. . ......... . ............... . .... Bernard Cohen
Assistant Editor . . . . ...... .. . .................... Susan Baldwin
Assistant Editor . . . . ............. . . .. .... . ........ Tom Robbins
Design and Layout .. ... . .. . ... . . . . . ....... .... ... Louis Fulgoni
Business Assistant ... . .. . ........ ... .. .. ... . .. . . .. Carolyn Wells
Copyright 1980. All rights reserved. No portion or portions oj this
journal may be reprinted without the express written permission oj the
publishers.
This issue was funded by a grant from New York Community Trust
Cover Drawing by Marie Thurman
CITY LlMITS/April1980 .
RENT AND TAX AID FOR TIL BUILDINGS
BUT NO PLEDGE ON SALES, REPAIRS
City housing officials, meeting with nearly 200 ten-
ants who are managing their city-owned buildings, have
pledged financial aid to blunt the impact of rent in-
creases that might otherwise force many of them to
move out.
The HPD officials said that a supply of Section 8 (ex-
isting housing) subsidies and senior citizen rent increase
exemptions should minimize if not eliminate the dis-
placement of low and fixed income tenants as rents in
buildings in the Tenant Interim Lease program are
raised.
There are now more than 250 buildings with 5,500
apartments in the TIL program, which provides for
eventual sale of the buildings to the tenants following a
period of
Rental assistance was one of 14 demands presented to
Deputy Housing Commissioner William Eimicke and
Assistant Commissioner Philip St. Georges at a meeting
with the City-Wide TIL Coalition on March 26. In all,
HPD said 'yes' to seven of the demands, including revi-
sion of the lease in collaboration with the coalition; tax
abatements equal to those offered to private developers,
and better communication with other city agencies to
facilitate transfer of signatory control over two-party
welfare checks to the tenant associations.
Although other demands elicited 'yes' responses,
many in the audience called the commitments "soft."
Two of those involved liability insurance and the
rental assistance. "I feel that what they said will have to
be analyzed a little bit," said Jim French, a member of
the TIL Coalition steering committee. "Some of those
'yesses' were kind of iffy. "
If those questions drew slightly slippery answers,
others elicited pronounced 'no's.' Eimicke and St.
Georges refused to commit HPD to a maximum sales
price of $250-per-unit for all TIL buildings; they refused
to promise repairs and upgrading of the building at a
level of $2,500-per-unit, and they refused to guarantee
the major systems of the buildings for 30 years.
Organizers of the meeting said they were pleased with
the large turnout and called the first large-scale meeting
of TIL tenants and HPD commissioners a productive
session. At the same time, they observed that in granting
some of the demands and saying 'no' to others in a way
that deflected responsibility elsewhere, the commission-
ers had skillfully succee.ded in partially disarming the
group.
For example, the commissioners strongly endorsed
shifting the burden of insuring the buildings from the
tenants to the city for as long as the buildings remain
city-owned. The buildings now in the TIL program pay
CITY LIM I TS/A P ril 1980
4
a total of more than $500,000 per year for liability insur-
ance. A recent study by HPD shows that there have
been only eight successful claims totaling $40,000 from
accidents in all city-owned buildings in the past 10 years,
St. Georges said. "It is absurd at this point that we are
requiring each individual building to carry liability in-
surance," Eimicke said. "We completely agree with
you. But recognizing a wrong and changing it are two
different things." He said the problem is selling the idea
to the Comptroller's office. City property other than
tenant and community managed buildings are "self-in-
sured," meaning that claims are paid out of the city
treasury.
The commissioners took a similar tack on the'-ques-
tion of committing more funds for the buildings.
Eimicke said that with an anticipated 6,000 units in the
program next year, it would take an allocation of $15
million to provide repairs averaging $2,500 per unit. "I
support it," Eimicke said. "Do I think it's realistic next
year-probably not." In fact, HPD's request for the
TIL program is only $2.4 million from next year's Com-
munity Development budget.
And while HPD's response to the rental assistance de-
mand was listed as a 'yes,' the commissioners acknowl-
edged that non-elderly, single individuals are not pro-
tected by either Section 8 or the senior citizen rent in-
crease exemption. Moreover, applying the rent increase
exemptions to the TIL buildings before sale will reduce
the revenue needed by the tenants association.
Eimicke and St. Georges said that TIL buildings are
among the class of buildings that have been over-taxed
in New York City and that there would be an effort to
reassess the properties before they are sold. Others
familiar with the buildings said that no one really knows
what effect reassessment would have.
Among the constraints that HPD officials said hamp-
ered their effectiveness is having only 3 engineers to ser-
vice 600 buildings when emergencies come up and five
lawyers to handle rent non-payment cases and a backlog
of 1,000 cases per month. Under consideration, they
said, is a proposal to utilize the services of a non-profit
organization to work with the TIL buildings to speed up
repairs.
The city's refusal to accept a uniform $250-per-unit
sales price remains one of the most controversial issues.
So far, the Clinton section of Manhattan is the only area
where it is known that HPD intends to exercise its
option of deviating from that pricetag. But Helen
Rosenberg, a tenant at 455-57-59 West 35th Street, one
of the affected buildings, warned the audience, "What
they are doing to us, they can do to you." 0
RESURGENT WELFARE MOVEMENT
DEMANDS GRANT INCREASE
After a decade of relative quiet, welfare recipients are
once again turning to political activism. Inflation has
eaten away at grant levels, and the downturn in the
economy is forcing increasing numbers of people onto
welfare or unemployment.
In New York, with the third highest cost of living in
the nation, inflated costs have far outstripped benefits.
People on welfare still receive just $2.08 per person each
day for all non-shelter expenses. Despite supposedly
"high" welfare rent ceilings ($218/month for a family
of four), 50 per cent of all New York recipients are
forced by even higher housing costs to spend more on
rent than they receive in their rent grant. That extra rent
money must come out of the basic grant allotment for
food, clothing, and other necessities.
The Redistribute America Movement (RAM), an
organization of welfare recipients and other: poor
people, was formed in New York City last year and now
has eight city chapters and ten others throughout the
state. RAM is working with the Downtown Welfare
Advocate Center (DWAC) to inform recipients of their
legal rights, and to organize to fight for expanded rights
and benefits through direct action.
On March 27, 1980, 2,000 recipients and supporters
marched for the second year in Albany to demand a
grant increase. The march from Lincoln Park concluded
with a rally on the Capitol steps. After the demonstra-
tion, groups of recipients talked with legislators about
the desperate need for a grant increase.
The Black and Puerto Rican caucus, supposedly com-
mitted to holding out on the budget until a welfare grant
increase was included, lost some of its clout when
several members took a tour to Africa that kept them
out of the country during legislative discussion. Al-
though there is still a possibility for a welfare grant
increase this year, it certainly will not approach the
almost 100 per cent increase that is needed to bring
recipients up to a minimal standard of living. On March
30, the State Assembly passed a 10 per cent increase in
the grant, although the bill is still in committee in the
Senate. Governor Carey has indicated his support for
the increase.
These two rallies, the largest welfare rights actions in
the country in the last eight years, are proof that welfare
organizing is experiencing a rebirth. Today's struggles
are the continuation of a fifteen-year history of struggle
over welfare rights. Before 1969, most states gave public
assistance in the form of specific payments for rent,
clothing, furniture, and other necessities. For years
most people on public assistance were not given infor-
mation on their right to such grants, and so did not
receive them. However, due to the success of the Na-
5
Demonstrators at Albany rally, March 27, demanding an increase in
welfare grants.
tional Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in the
1960's in educating people about their rights and direct
action methods of obtaining them, the number of
people receiving all their legal grants increased dramati-
cally.
That directly contributed to a nationwide rash of leg-
islative changes setting grants at a predetermined "flat"
amount. The change occurred in New York in 1969, at
which time the legislature used the U.S. Government
Bureau of Labor Statistic's Lower Living Standard as a
starting point to determine dollar amounts for their new
flat grant.
From the Lower Living Standard the legislature sub-
tracted all money for books, recreation, gifts, and food
away from home. They then deducted more by under-
budgeting for transportation, utilities and food. Finally
they cut this amount by 12 per cent assuming that a wel-
fare mother with three children would need less food,
utilities and clothing than the "typical" family of two
adults and two children.
The New York grant was raised 11.85 per cent in 1974
to adjust for inflation (calculated at 1972 prices), and
has not been raised since, despite a 100 per cent increase
in inflation.
As inflation continues to eat away at already meager
welfare grants, the resurgence in welfare organizing will
become even more marked. RAM and other welfare
groups are pushing for the replacement of welfare with
a guaranteed ADEQUATE annual income, with an
automatic cost of living indexing. Until then, the
struggle for welfare grant increases will continue. 0
Diana Autin
CITY LlMITS/April1980
SUBSIDIZED HOUSING
With the exception of subsidized housing, both the
House and Senate budget committees have followed
President Carter's lead on 1981 spending cuts for
housing and community development programs that
impact low and moderate income neighborhoods.
Carter proposed a $611.5 billion budget on March 30
that reduces outlays by about $5 million from the
budget he presented on January 28. Although the re-
vised Administration budget cuts away at major domes-
tic programs, it leaves untouched the original goal of
283,000 to 300,000 units of Section 8 and public housing
in 1981. That represents a proposed increase over this
year's level, which was about 240,000 units.
The House Budget Committee cut $16.5 billion from
the President's request but left the federally-assisted
housing intact. In the Senate, however, the Budget
Committee voted to cut subsidized housing back to
approximately 210,000 units. The reduction was
approved after a resolution to continue present commit-
ments but provide no additional units was defeated by a
tie vote. The senators criticized the high cost of the
program, the long term commitment that would be un-
controllable and the profits being made by developers.
The two budget committees were less independent
about other housing programs. "In general, the House
and Senate were consistent with the President's reduc-
tion," a HUD budget official said.
The Carter budget calls for a cut in outlays from what
was originally proposed for 1981 of approximately $92
million in Community Development Block Grant funds,
$28 million in Section 312 low interest loans and $3
million in grants under the Neighborhood Self-Help
Development Fund.
In addition to these cuts, Carter's budget called for
the elimination of general revenue sharing to the states.
Should that become official, New York city could sta'nd
continued on page J J
6
BUDGET AXE LOOMS
OVER CETA JOBS
"CETA is the most unpopular program in Congress
right now, so Carter's not going to have any unfavor-
able reaction to the cuts he's proposing. There are now
just a few voices crying in the wilderness, saying 'to hell
with the balanced budget, let's do what has to be
done' ," remarked Othello Poulard who heads the
CETA Project of the Center for Community Change in
Washington.
Proposed cuts for CETA, the Comprehensive Em-
ployment and Training Act, in fiscal year 1981 reflect a
gloomy picture in both White House and Capitol Hill
versions. Already hard hit by cuts in this year's CETA
budget, and plagued by a shortfall in the numbers of
jobs funded but not allocated, CETA may well be but
a shadow of its former self by the time the ink dries on
fiscal 1981.
The administration has called for a $1.6 billion slice
from the CETA appropriations of 1980, and while final
figures have not been reported out of House and Senate
Committees, estimates suggested they were equal to,
and in some instances more severe than, the White
House cuts.
Hardest hit in dollar figures is Title VI Public Service
Employment jobs, which may lose up to $800 million
and 70,000 slots. Summer Youth Employment and
Young Adult Conservation Corps are both earmarked
for cuts between 50 and 100 per cent, while Private
Sector jobs may lose $90 million. In addition, the Wel-
fare Demonstration Program will be eliminated entirely.
So far, no broad-based national opposition has
emerged to the CETA cuts, although such a network
may grow from a national CETA conference of com-
munity based organizations, called by the Center for
Community Change in late May in Washington.
With sweeping reductions in many parts of the ad-
ministration's proposed balanced budget, CETA may
continued on page J I
CD BUDGET HEADS FOR HOME STRETCH
by Brian Sullivan
The lasting lesson of last year's Community Develop-
ment budget processis that there really was not enough
CD money to pay for all the commitments made by the
city.
In a continuing effort to use the CD budget to satisfy
all of New York City'S housing and neighborhood
improvement needs as well as provide supportive public
services without using any of the city's own Capital or
Expense budget funds, the city planners succeeded in
shortchanging everybody in general. Hurt most partic-
ularly were the low income neighborhoods which
depend almost exclusively on CD funds for basic
improvements and public services.
HPD eventually got some $175 million in cn. Year.5.
which was evenly split between "In Rem" programs and
the rest of HPD's housing rehabilitation, code enforce-
ment and demolition programs. Following hearings
throughout the city, the City Planning Commission
attempted a highly controversial plan for 10 Neighbor-
hood Strategy areas as well as a mixed bag of economic
development, public services and improvements.
That was last year. Although some things have
changed, the game is still the same: how to use $259 mil-
lion in federal CD funds to substitute for a non-existent
Capital Budget and keep pressure off the Expense
Budget in a year when Mayor Koch has promised to
balance the city's books.
HPD has put together a CD 6 request totalling $247
million, just $12 million short of the entire CD 6 alloca-
tion! For the time being I am assuming that President
Carter's budget cuts will not affect New York City'S CD
allocation, although a cut of $10 million to $15 million
had been rumored prior to the New York primary.
The HPD proposals include major increases in rehab-
ilitation programs ($26 million to $54 million) and in In
Rem programs ($78 million to $106 million).
Commissioner Anthony Gliedman's priorities for
increased funding will undoubtedly raise some criticism
among neighborhood housing groups. The Participa-
tion Loan Program (which, with private mortgage
interest rates going through the roof, is virtually useless
for producing affordable housing for low and moderate
income families) is in for a big increase-$13 million
more than last year.
Likewise, the Article 8A Loan Program, which is
basically a landlord moderate rehabilitation program, is
slated for an increase of $9.5 million over last year.
On the other hand, the Sweat Equity program has
been put in for only a $2 million increase over last year.
This translates into only about 9 or' 10 sweat equity
buildings (assuming 7 dwelling units per building at
about $30,000 per unit). Meanwhile, the pipeline of
sweat equity buildings is over 60 and growing.
And while the CD 6 draft budget has not yet been
published (it should be out in April), Herbert Sturz, the
new chairman of the City Planning Commission and
head of the Mayor's CD Committee, has already run
head on into the NSA issue. In an internal memoran-
dum he has proposed to designate only the four addi-
tional NSA's mandated by HUD and at the same time to
give some as-yet undefined priority status to the six
community districts in the South Bronx. Since there is
roughly the same amount of CD money available this
y ~ . r . as last, the designation of these 10 additional areas
for increased attention in CD 6 may be little more than a
gesture.
This skepticism is based on the experience of the first
10 NSA's, which are still tyring to squeeze CD money
out of the city after months of frustrating negotiations
with CPC staff in formulating their neighborhood plans
and more frustration in trying to cajole the operating
agencies (such as HPD) into releasing the money ear-
marked for their neighborhoods.
How these ongoing NSA commitments can be hon-
ored while at the same time taking on 10 additional
neighborhoods in CD 6 and financing a whole range of
service programs, economic development projects and
capital improvements is a trick that Sturz's predecessors
have been unable to pull off. Whether he will fare any
better remains to be seen.
Of course we will have to wait and see the draft CD 6
budget, but in case the Mayor's CD Committee is look-
ing for a few suggestions as to how to get the most out
of the available funds, the New York City Housing and
Community Development Coalition will be drawing up
its annual CD Counterbudget at its next meeting.
7
We expect the counterbudget to be ready in time for
neighborhood residents and community activists to use
in testifying at the Board of Estimate and City Council
joint public hearings scheduled for May.
In case anyone has lost track of the former housing
and planning department chiefs, Nathan Leventhal .and
Robert Wagner Jr. are both deputy mayors now, and
both have left CD behind them. If this pattern continues
over the next few years, Koch's administrative payroll
may grow by leaps and bounds and each year a new crop
of potential deputy mayors will be left to struggle with a
shrinking CD budget and a growing list of unmet com-
mitments to New York City'S neighborhoods. 0
WAITING FOR OSHDTA
CONSUMER CO-OP BANK IS OPEN
Washington-More than five years since the first leg-
islation was introduced in Congress and some 20
months after the law was enacted, the National Con-
sumer Cooperative Bank has finally opened its doors.
Newly appointed Bank President Carol Greenwald
brought an unusual New York-style block party atmos-
phere to Washington when a large tent was erected and a
rag-time. band installed outside the bank's new offices
for the opening celebration on March 21.
The bank staff, meanwhile, has moved quickly into
action, reviewing its first loan applications,and by April
7, 1980 the bank had committed its first loans.
But while the bank moves ahead,its Office of Self-
Help Development and Technical Assistance-of
primary concern to low income groups-has yet to get
off the ground. The Office was established by Congress
to provide low interest loans, interest subsidies and
equity-type "capital investment advances" to low
income and new co-ops as well as technical assistance to
co-ops of all kinds.
Because the legislation requires the bank to make
"market rate" loans, the low-interest component of the
Office is particularly critical as interest rates on conven-
tionalloans reach record levels. Low income advocates
have real doubts as to whether the bank can meet its
statutory goal of providing 35 per cent of its loans to
low income cooperatives unless#this low interest and
capital advance component is in place. The Office is
not expected to' begin operating before mid-summer.
The major delay in starting the Office involves the
nomination of its director. After months of delay, the
White House withdrew the proposed nomination of
Clifton Henry for the position, throwing open the
nomination and confirmation process.
Some cooperative groups are concerned that without
the Office's lending operation in place the bank will be
setting loan policies dealing only with established and
middle income groups. This could make it difficult for
low income groups to get a positive response to their
loan applications. These groups have proposed that the
bank delay its opening until the office is functioning as
well, but contervailing pressures to get the bank moving
in time for this year's Congressional appropriations
were strong enough to defeat such suggestions.
Another major concern for low income communities
relates to the proposed policies for the Office that were
issued by the Bank Board in December and approved at
its March meeting. Despite extensive public comments
to the contrary at the nationwide hearings, the Bank
Board weakened the basic orientation of the proposed
policies toward low income groups. Arguing that exces-
sive emphasis on low income co-ops was divisive, the
Board chose to emphasize the Office's orientation
towards existing and new co-ops, not necessarily low
income. In addition, earlier proposals to make 70 per
cent of the office's technical assistance available to low
income groups were dropped.
8
Until recently when Greenwald took personal charge
of the office, its interim staff was operating in a kind of
"twilight zone" without substantive leadership or legal
authority. Internal staff problems and resulting changes
have created tensions between the bank as a whole and
the Office.
Because the funding for theOffice's technical assist-
ance (approximately $2 million for Fiscal Year 1980) was
appropriated under Title I of the act, the Office has been
able to initiate its technical assistance program. Encour-
aging for community groups is the appointment of
Ernesto Guttierrez, formerly associate director of the
Catholic Charities Campaign for Human Development,
as the director of the technical assistance division.
Under his leadership the staff has compiled a roster of
some 2,500 technical assistance "deliverers" to help co-
op groups with organizational and financial manage-
ment and preparation of loan applications. But no defi-
nite policies have been established for the technical
assistance program, with priority being placed currently
on making "emergency" technical assistance available
to existing co-op groups facing crisis situations.
In addition, Fiscal Year 1981 funding for the bankis
vulnerable to the budget cutting mood sweeping Con-
gress. The original Carter Administration request of
$175 million has been reduced to $132 million in the
revised budget submitted to Congress in March.
In the meantime, loan applications are available from
the bank with a special checkoff for groups needing
low-interest assistance. Interested groups should apply
now. The bank staff is processing all loan applications,
for both low income and for other groups. The
intention is to complete all paperwork so that when the
office does become functional, loans can be committed
almost immediately.
Write the National Consumer Co-operative Bank,
20001 S. St. NW, Washington D.C. 20009 or call 800-
387-6030.
The Conference on Alternative State and Local Poli-
cies in Washington has established a unit to monitor the
bank and assist low income and community groups to
use the lending institution. 0
Michael Freedberg
HUD PLANS STUDY
OF IN REM HOUSING
HUD has decided to study the array of New York City
housing programs that are attempting to treat the thous-
ands of buildings that have ended up in city ownership
-at a current cost of $118 million per year-as the
result of an unprecedented epidemic of abandonment by
private owners.
The two-year study is intended to evaluate the effec-
tiveness of the different housing programs in a way that
will not only help New York City refine its efforts but
also aid local governments across the country where
housing abandonment has become a problem.
The research will attempt to assess how well the pro-
grams are improving housing conditions and meeting
residents' needs as an 'immediate goal and the likelihood
of longer-term success in transferring ownership of the
buildings to non-profit and for-profit groups.
A pre-selected group of non-profit organizations be-
lieved by HUD to have the interest and the ability to
carry out the research was invited to submit applica-
tions, although HUD is bound to consider proposals
from other groups. The deadline for applying was April
22.
At present, New York City reigns over a vast empire
of 12,000 abandoned buildings. Of these, some 4,500
buildings with 37,600 apartments are occupied. The
number of occupied units is expected to more than
double by 1982. The city has seven programs and spends
more than $82 million-a-year in federal Community
Development Block Grant funds alone to manage,
maintain and in some cases, rehabilitate the buildings.
Direct city management accounts for about two-
thirds of the 37,600 occupied units. The remaining third
are in one of six programs that employ private (non-
profit and for-profit) groups to manage and repair the
buildings and prepare them for eventual sale to a range
of possible buyers. These are called Alternative Man-
agement programs, and four of the six are less than two
years old.
Although the design of the study is left to the indivi-
dual applicant, a 39-page description by HUD of the
project calls for (1) an analysis of how the city runs the
various programs, (2) an evaluation of how effective the
programs are by looking at such factors as resident
satisfaction, the cost of upgrading the buildings, rent
levels in relation to other measures, effectiveness of
management and the role of self help, (3) a projection of
the future viability of the buildings and their continuing
management and maintenance needs.
According to the HUD outline, the research is in-
tended to help the city find out whether the management
programs are successfully improving the housing at
prices low and moderate income families can afford;
what criteria should be used in assigning buildings to
different management and sales programs; in what
kinds of neighborhoods and under what circumstances
do the programs operate most effectively; whether man-
agement by community and tenant groups is feasible
and cost effective and what kinds of training programs
are required; what neighborhood, tenant and building
characteristics affect the long-term prospects for finan-
cial viability of the structures and what criteria should
be used to choose the appropriate form of ownership; to
what extent are the alternative programs successful in
preparing the properties for sale.
The HUD Request for Applications does not specify a
program budget ceiling, but it is believed to be in the
range of $300,000 to $350,000 for the two-year study. 0
9
ENERGY GRANT
A grants program to develop appropriate technology
projects is being offered by Region II of the U.S. De-
partment of Energy to individuals, community groups
and small businesses. The program includes idea devel-
opment grants of up to $10,000, and product/system
development and demonstration grants of up to
$50,000.
The grants are to encourage the development of small
scale, easily operable and energy efficient projects.
Proposals should address local needs and employ local
materials and labor.
Applications are available from Toby Sanchez at
A.N.H.D, 674-7610, or directly from Region II, U.S.
Dept. of Energy, 26 Federal Plaza, N.Y. Deadline for
applications is May 20, 1980.
SELF -HELP DEVELOPMENT
HUD has announced a July 15, 1980 deadline for ap-
plications for the second cycle of the Neighborhood
Self-Help Development Project Grants. In addition, ap-
plications must be submitted to the A-95 clearinghouse,
the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission, for
review by June 5, 1980. The grant program is for proj-
ects for which there has been some preliminary plan-
ning, and eligible projects include energy conservation,
weatherization, neighborhood initiated housing rehab,
among others. To receive the application kit call 202/
755-7971 . The first cycle ended on March 21 .
The annual conference of the New York City Housing
and Community Development Coalition will be held at
the Harlem State Office Building in Manhattan.
For details about the date contact the Pratt Center
at 636-3489.
Advertisement.
JOB REFERRAL NETWORK
The Association of Neighborhood Housing Develop-
ers announces the availability of a new service for both
job-seekers and employers. The ANHD Job Develop-
ment Service will maintain a file of resumes and make
referrals to housing organizations and private industry
professional positions, clerical positions, and a wide
variety of skilled and unskilled jobs. Individuals are
invited to make applications and/or submit resumes.
The Job Development Service is also asking employ-
ers for notification of upcoming vacancies. Applicants
can be pre-screened to employers' specifications.
There is no charge to either the job-seekers or the
employers for these services.
Address all communications to: ANHD Job Develop-
ment Service, liS East 23rd Street, 8th floor, New York,
NY 10010; or call (212) 674-7610.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING PROGRAM
Executive Director wanted to develop neighborhood
housing program in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. Previous
housing and tenant organizing experience desired. Re-
sponsibilities: grantsmanship; staff supervision; knowl-
edge of city housing programs and agencies; negotiation
with public agencies, owners, developers, financial insti-
tutions. Brooklyn resident preferred. For inquiries
contact Eileen Murray at 469-9495. Send resumes to:
Dorothy Ganz - President
Erasmus Neighborhood Federation
c/o Neighborhood Stabilization Prognlm
2211 Church Avenue, Room 209
Brooklyn, NY 11226 .
Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer
Classified
Community Organizers-Neighborhood based organization seeks
staff to work with area residents; bi-lingualism preferred. For more
information, call or send resume to:
NMIC#21
601 W. 181st St.
New York. N.Y. 10033
(212) 568-9166
Merchant Organizer to work with small businessmen on neighbor-
hood commercial revitalization program. Applicant should have a
B.A. in Business and/or comparable organizing experience. Must
speak fluent Spanish & English. Submit resume to Michael Rochford
St. Nicholas, N.P. & H.R. Corp., 11-29 Catherine St. Bklyn NY
11211. ' ,
If You Are In Housing ...
Think about advertising your
product/services in CITY LIMITS.
Call 674-7610
CITY LIMITS/April 1980
10
NEW PUBLICATIONS
The Homesteader's Handbook, an illustrated guide
to aid tenants in managing their own buildings, has been
published by the Urban Homesteading Assistance
Board.
The 117 -page manual instructs tenants on how to set
up a budget, establish a rent policy, determine operating
costs, formulate repair priorities, draw up leases, fix up
vacant apartments, deal with non-payment problems
and perform a variety of other tasks related to self
management.
The guide provides tips on how to save money
through energy conservation and self-help labor. It also
lists city agencies and organizations capable of provid-
ing assistance to the tenant-managers.
The handbook comes with sample building manage-
ment forms.
It is available for $6 plus postage from: UHAB, 1047
Amsterdam Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10025 or call
749-0602.
Neighborhood Oriented Programs of the Federal
Government is a compendium of funding and technical
assistance resources for neighborhood organizations
published by the Office of Neighborhoods, Voluntary
Associations and Consumer Protection, U.S. Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Development.
Tenants Rights for Better Housing is a free publica-
tion of the New York State Department of State
Division of Economic Opportunity, 162 Washington
Ave., Albany, N.Y. 12231.
The Michigan Task Force on Consumer Cooperatives
has published a Report to Governor William G.
Milliken. The report contains several suggestions for
promoting development of housing cooperatives for low
and moderate income people, and recommendations to
encourage the growth and development of cooperative
housing in Michigan. For copies of the report, contact:
Consumer Cooperative Task Force, Bureau of Commu-
nity Services, State Secondary Complex, Box 30015
Lansing Michigan 48909. . ,
The Multifamily Urban Homesteading Bulletin
covers progress made in Chicago, Boston, Oakland,
Cleveland, Hartford and Springfield in the self-help res-
toration of multi-unit structures acquired by home-
s ~ e a d e r s at nominal cost, and owned by them at comple-
tIon. Contact: "The Bulletin," c/o The Urban home-
steading Assistance Board, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10025, to be added to the mailing liSt.'
o
Housing Budget continued
to lose as much as $100 million of its portion of New
York state's allotment. Direct revenue sharing to the
cities remains in place, through which New York City
expects to receive $300 million.
The federal government uses two systems to calculate
budgets. Outlays, used here, refer to the actual amount
of dollars that the U.S. Treasury spent or is projected to
spend for a given program.
Approval by Congress of the $92 million cut in Com-
munity Development funds would mean a loss to New
York City of approximately $5.5 million, according to
the city's legislative office in Washington. The city has
anticipated receiving $259 million for 1981, or CD Year
6. Nearly 90 per cent of the proposed cut in CD is from
a fund to close out the old urban renewal program.
"If we lost $300,000 we're in trouble," a City Plan-
ning Department official observed. According to the
planning agency, applications for 4,340 projects total."
ling more than $1 billion have been submitted to the city
for CD 6, which begins next September. Some of the
projects may qualify for and be funded through the
city's capital budget, but even so the CD budget is far
too small to meet the needs of bona fide, eligible
projects, officials say. HPD alone is asking for $247
million next year.
In absorbing the possible cut, if the city were to target
agencies that have the poorest track record in spending
their CD funds, the likely victims would be the Office of
Economic Development, which spent 0.3 per cent of its
funds through CD Year 4; the Department of Parks, 25
per cent; the New York City Housing Authority, 29 per
cent and the Sanitation Department, 35 per cent.
In addition to the proposed cuts for next year, the
Carter budget wants to take about $21 million away
from the current CD year and $14 million from Section
312 loans. It would also drop the volume of Section 235
housing from 25,000 units to 18,000 units this year and
leave it at 18,000 units next year. Left alone for the
moment is the Urban Development Action Grant Pro-
gram, set at $365 million in 1981, up from $180 million
this year.
Revenue sharing funds are spent as discretionary
treasury monies and are not earmarked for any particu-
lar area. In an effort to ease the effect on large cities
with the elimination of revenue sharing to the states,
Carter proposed a total of $500 million for states which
have supplied large amounts of aid to local govern-
ments. Although deemed unlikely to pass, that move
would restore $72 million to New York City. 0
11
CETA continued
well be without some of its traditional supporters. Such
groups as the U.S. Conference of Mayors are busy
scrambling for their own funds and, CETA proponents
fear, could be persuaded to forfeit CETA in order to
recoup other losses. "The mayors are all too upset
about losing General Revenue Sharing to think much
about CETA," said Poulard. "That's their sacred cow.
GRS is very flexible, you can mix it up any way you
want-not so with CETA, it's a real hassle for them. "
At this point almost $900 million remains unspent in
CETA funds in fiscal year 1980. That money may well
remain unspent, and be considered an expenditure rate
below the authorized level.
CETA Title VI was initially enacted as countercyclical
aid, designed to increase in times of high unemploy-
ment. But despite an administration estimate of unem-
ployment running at 7.4 per cent next year, the
"trigger" mechanism in CETA will remain unreleased.
When' unemployment passes 4 per cent, PSE funds are
supposed to cover 20 per cent of the unemployed past
that mark. At the January, 1980 rate of 6.2 per cent this
would mean 400,000 jobs. But as proposals stand now,
only 130,000 to 150,000 jobs will be provided in 1981.
Locally in New York City, community organizations
in the Title VI program suffered a 24 per cent cut at the
start of 1980 and are soon expected to receive an addi-
tional 8 to 11 per cent cut. The CETA VI Coalition in
New York has been involved in a continuous struggle
with its prime sponsor, the city Department of Employ-
ment to fill job slots that have been vacant for many
months. Verbal approval of a plan which would allow
the non-profit sponsors to hire directly for open posi-
tions has been received by the city from the Department
of Labor, and is expected to be implemented shortly.
One breakdown of the national CETA cuts shows
New York City losing $25 million in Title VI funding.
This may spell increased competition between the com-
munity organizations and the city for the remaining
jobs, as both draw on the Title VI pool for workers. A
number of groups, including the National Urban Coali-
tion, have urged that a mandatory set-aside of Title VI
slots be created for community based organizations.
Another possible victim of the balanced budget may
be the administration's self-described "major piece of
domestic legislation," the Youth Employment and
Demonstration Projects Act, which came before
Congress for hearings just two weeks before the bal-
anced budget was announced. Thought to be dead after
it failed to gain support on Capitol Hill, the program
may yet have life, as the administration has let it be
known it still intends to push the legislation. The youth
initiative would combine three present CETA titles and
add a major remedial education element. 0
FAIR HOUSING CONTRACT
DISPUTE RAISES CITY POLICY
QUESTIONS
by Tom Robbins
Fair housing-a battle supposed to have been waged
and won in the 1950's and 60's-remains an unrealized
goal in New York City. Despite federal, state and local
legislation, recent studies show that racial discrimina-
tion in housing is still a major problem, with many of its
victims unassisted and much of its cause unaddressed.
Now, a dispute between the city and a federally
funded agency has, according to one official involved,
"crystallized" the problems that remain in shaping an
effective strategy to ensure equal opportunity in the
housing market to minority New Yorkers.
Charging that the Open Housing Center, recipient of a
$230,000 contract in 1979-80 to assist housing discrimi-
nation victims, failed to furnish sufficient detail for ade-
quate evaluation of its performance, the city depart-
ment of Housing Preservation and Development has
held up approval of a full contract renewal for the
Center in 1980-81.
The Center has spurned an HPD offer of a five
month contract at a 30 per cent budget reduction. The
city, the Center insists, is in violation of its federal
commitment by blocking full funding, and has also been
vague and contradictory in its objections to OHC's per-
formance. The Center is presentlY awaiting the results
of an in-depth study of its work by HPD, as well as the
findings of an inter-agency task force on fair housing
strategy on which HPD will base its decision whether or
not to re-fund the agency.
Looming behind the dispute is the over-all question
raised by many civil rights activists of the depth of the
city's commitment to an effective strategy for fair
housing, as well as the suspicions of a political backlash
of a class action discrimination law suit lodged against
Starrett City by the Center last December.
In that suit, OHC, along ~ i t h two other organiza-
tions, charged on behalf of nine black persons that Star-
rett City was using a racially exclusionary quota de-
signed to keep the almost 6,000 unit complex mostly
white. HPD has adamantly denied that the Starrett liti-
gation has had any bearing on its present dissatisfaction
with OHC's performance. But fair housing advocates
contacted by City Limits have asserted that the Center's
problems are direct fallout from the suit.
The program's funding cut comes at a time when the
city has been under steady prodding by both the federal
government and private groups to develop a more con-
crete and effective fair housing strategy. A 1977 federal
Housing and Urban Development department monitor-
12
ing review of city policy found that "a vacuum exists
concerning . .. fair housing strategies." HUD required
the city to establish a system to ensure that federal fair
housing legislation be reflected in city policies. While
HUD's August 1979 acceptance letter of the city's Com-
munity Development Block Grant funds application
noted improvement in fair housing policies, it also
called for further refinement and the creation of a
HUD-city task force to address the problem. That
group is presently meeting, though according to city and
HUD members, it has yet to formalize any recommen-
dations.
Last January, a resolution of the Tri-State Regional
Planning Commission called on the city to provide a
higher level of funding of fair housing efforts in its CD
program.
Racial Imbalance
A study released last summer by the Regional Plan
Association found that blacks are confined to less than
one a half per cent of the available residential land in
the greater metropolitan area. Moreover, the study said,
little of the region's racial imbalance could be attribute9 .
to income differences. Racial discrimination, not eco-
nomics, it said, is the culprit.
This has translated into a situation in New York City,
according to the city's 1979 Housing Assistance Plan,
where two boroughs, Queens and Staten Island, have
white majorities of over eighty and ninety per cent,
respectively, and in the three other boroughs, distinct
lines of racial demarcation exist in many community
districts.
Beyond the statistics, last summer's rash of cross
burning incidents dramatically underscored the racial
problems minorities still encounter when attempting to
move into largely white areas.
"If anything," said Phyllis Spiro, who headed
OHC's CD-funded fair housing project, "housing dis-
crimination has accelerated. What you've got now is
quotas in 'free choice' housing and closed neighbor-
hoods. Blacks and Hispanics are paying twice. Whites
already have housing mobility and the lion's share of
the developments," she said, "while minorities are
locked into ghetto neighborhoods and limited in access
to new, improved housing. "
"As abandonment and neighborhood deterioration
has increased," noted Joan Thompson of the Neighbor-
hood Stabilization Program, a federally funded project
administered by the City Commission on Human
Rights, "people have been left with fewer options. The
pie is a lot smaller. As a result there is infinitely more,
different kinds of racial housing discrimination going
on. For one thing realtors are much more sophisticated
these days. Rather than slamming the door in someone's
face, they have learned how to 'steer'. People are still
hesitant to come forth and complain."
Since 1968, when passage of the federal Civil Rights
Act extended and improved previous legislation, it has
been illegal to refuse to sell or rent to anyone on the
basis of race in any private residential property. City "
and state laws complement the federal legislation, and
in recent years additional laws have prohibited the racial
"steering" of renters or buyers.
Housing discrimination victims have a number of
options open to them in New York City. Federal, state
and city agencies exist to hear and act on complaints.
While enforcement powers differ from agency to
agency, HUD, which acts as federal watchdog over
housing discrimination, is limited to conciliation, where-
as both state and city can issue restraining orders as well
as cease and desist edicts. In addition, private individ-
uals may sue in federal court under Title VIII of the
federal Fair Housing Law.
Fewer Complaints
But despite this legal machinery, the number of
housing complaints does not appear to be keeping pace
with the discrimination which exists. All three govern-
ment agencies report heavy slippage in the number of
complaints filed and sustained. A total of III housing
complaints were successfully resolved by all three
agencies in New York City in 1978, a steep drop from
the average of 183 per year recorded between 1973 and
1977.
Some of that slippage can be attributed to budget and
staff cuts in the city and state agencies, which have
traditionally handled the bulk of local complaints. The
New York State Division of Human Rights 1978 annual
report described the effect of inflation and budget
reductions as forcing a "drastic curtailment" in opera-
tion. Similarly, cuts at the City Commission on Human
. Rights have caused the agency to "die a slow death of
attrition" according to one former worker there.
The most powerful remedies to discrimination victims,
however, are the decisions handed down by federal
judges who hear Title VIII suits brought by individuals.
The courts can award damages, which neither the state
nor the city is empowered to do.
But despite this seemingly wide array of legal and
judicial recourse, many minorities perceive the system
as "futile and ineffective" according to the Regional
Plan Association study. The figures of declining com-
plaints seem to buttress that assessment. While federal
. judgments are potentially effective and rewarding, they
are costly as well. Few individuals on their own, said the
RPA, can carry the burden of court costs, and public
defenders who take on such cases are few and have
heavy caseloads.
The Open Housing Center has attempted to intervene
in what is often a complicated and burdensome legal
process by working directly with people who feel they
have encountered housing bias.
"It's critical to have someone in the complainant's
corner," said Phyllis Spiro. "The government agencies
are limited to enforcement, they can't sit down with the
victim of discrimination and help explain to them how
to-build a better case, or where to seek out housing."
Attempting to help fill the "vacuum" described in
HUD's monitoring review of city fair housing efforts,
OHC submitted its proposal for Community Develop-
ment funding in 1978. New CD regulations issued by
HUD in March, 1978, which called for the provision of
fair housing counselling services gave further encour-
agement to their proposal. "We realized the city had an
obligation to provide fair housing services," said OHC
Director Betty Hoeber, "and we knew we could do a lot
more with city backing."
In existence since 1964, OHC had long been an organ-
ization to which city and state agencies referred com-
plainants for help in building evidence. In addition,
OHC had to its credit two major Title VIII decisions
won against the Lefrak and Trump realty organiza-
tions, both of which led to widescale access for minori-
ties to their numerous buildings and properties.
Omitted in the city's CD application, it was not until
Hoeber fired off an angry mailgram to then HUD Secre-
tary Patricia Harris protesting their omission that OHC
was accepted by the city. Further delays led to lit contract
which did not begin until March, 1979, six months after
money for the CD year became available.
Public Outreach
With funds in hand, OHC undertook a broad public
program via media spots and community meetings,
informing minorities and single mothers that anti-
discrimination enforcement existed and that the Center
was available to help. This publicity was seen as a major
component of the Center's work, as neither city nor
state agencies have done direct outreach for many years.
Complainants were represented before government
agencies, and, if necessary, provided with free legal
service to file complaints in federal court. Also, callers
13 CITY LIM ITS/Apri I 1980
to the Center's 24 hour hotline were counselled on how
to know when they are being discriminted against and
where to look for housing, frequently in projects and
areas that are mostly white and do not publicize
vacancies except to a limited audience.
"When we got the funding," said Spiro, "one of our
prime desires was to go into federal court and get
damages under Title VIII." During its first funded year,
OHC went into federal court 13 times on behalf of
clients. One of those court visits was for the class action
Starrett suit. "At this point," noted Spiro, "we're
wondering wether or not we did too well. "
"The Starrett suit was the culmination of years of
complaints," said Spiro. Since the huge Brooklyn hous-
ing complex's opening in 1974 more than fifty com-
plaints were filed by OHC on behalf of minorities who
were placed on waiting lists while whites applying were
immediately placed in apartments.
"We felt our clients had a right to a final determina-
tion on the discrimination encountered there," said
OHC general counsel Karene Freeman. The suit's legal
challenge, that affirmative marketing plans offered by
government subsidized developments cannot be turned
into strict quotas, has already raised controversy, and is
sure to bring more once trial begins. Just what reaction
the suit may have stirred in city government is difficult
to determine, Hoeber believes "without the
suit we would have without trouble."
Funds for the OHC project had already been included
in the city's 1980-81 Community Development applica-
tion and approved by HUD. B\}t, because of the time
lag in OHC's first year contract, second year funding
was not scheduled to begin until last March. In Novem-
ber, 1979, Hoeber and Spiro met with HPD Assistant
Commissioner for Equal Opportunity Laila Long to
work out a new budget and contract, as well as to
develop a proposal for 1981-82. With Long's assistance,
funds were re-arranged so that the project could hire a
part-time housing counsellor and plans made to request
$70,000 additional the following year so that a full
counseling component could be added.
In December, OHC, along with the Metropolitan
Council of the N.A.A.C.P. and the Columbia Univer-
sity Law School Fair Housing Clinic, announced their
suit against Starrett.
"By January," said Hoeber, "we were calling HPD
to find out what was happening with our contract and
we were told it was 'in typing'. But at the end of the
month, the Center was informed that the city did not
intend to renew because a broad fair housing strategy
was being devised and it could not be sure whether or
not OHC would fit into it. In a later conversation with
HPD Deputy Commissioner Robert Davis, Hoeber
says, she was told that there was insufficient informa-
tion available on which to base a decision to renew.
14
OHC and HPD tell entirely different versions of the
project's monitoring between March and December last
year. According to OHC, problems about inadequate
detail were never raised by Long or anyone else at HPD
until January. For its part, HPD insists that Long held a
number of conversations with Hoeber during the first
nine months of the contract when repeated requests
were made for improved data, but that it was never
forthcoming to HPD's satisfaction. Neither version can
be verified, as HPD says it never put its complaint into
writing.
Long declined to be interviewed as to why HPD
approved a contract and an additional year's proposal
in November. HPD spokeswoman Martha Gershun ex-
plained, "The planning process has to go on. The deci-
sion to place OHC in the CD VI application, and to
prepare for its 80-81 cont,ract was taken before evalua-
, tion of the Center's work was ,made." In order that the
Center's work not come to a precipitous en'd, said
Gershun, HPD offered the five month extension last
February.
It is difficult to separate the two strands of HPD's
objections to OHC's refunding. While the inter-agency
task force which is charged with developing an im-
proved fair housing strategy is meeting, evaluation is
also underway of the Center's record during its
contract. But what fair housing advocates outside OHC
and the city find puzzling is just how that strategy is
being shaped, and what was wrong in OHC's perform-
ance.
"It's pretty clear to me," said Paul Davidoff of the
Suburban Action Institute, an organization with a long
history of fair housing work, "that there isn't any city
fair housing strategy right now, at least not an affirma-
tive plan as called for by HUD." OHC, said Davidoff,
"is known and admired for their work."
Larry Grosberg, who heads the Columbia Fair Hous-
ing Clinic which is currently working with the City
Commission on Human Rights on its backlog of cases,
expressed similar scepticism about the city's strategy.
"It's a meaningless policy statement," he said of the
Housing Assistance Plan's fair housing scheme. "The
Open Housing Center has been in the forefront of this
kind of work for years," said Grosberg. "Their use of
ads to inform people, as well as counselling people to
seek out housing, addresses the fundamental question
of whether blacks arid others are aware of where
housing exsits."
Neither Grosberg nor Davidoff said he had been con-
tacted for suggestions concerning improvements in the
city's efforts. Despite the HAP plan's description of
fair housing strategy being devised by the heads of the
city's housing and planning departments in consultation
with the City Commission on Human Rights, an official
of CCHR told City Limits that no policy suggestions
have been requested of the Commission, and that a de-
tailed recommendation paper submitted to the Housing
Policy Board last year had been rejected without
comment. According to HPD, the CCHR is not taking
part in the present HUD-city task force either.
Frank Tor:res, HUD area Fair Housing officer who is
on the task force, said that HUD had been puzzled that
the city had not included CCHR's enforcement capacity
in its 1979 HAP plan. "It may have been an oversight,"
he said, "but the city has to look at what it is doing, and
then OHC will fall into place. If you don't fund OHC
you will have a vacuum again," Torres said. "We don't
think it makes any ~ i f f e r e n c e who does fair housing
counselling, as along as it's done. If it's not OHC, then
we have to know what's going to take its place."
According to OHC, the timing of what they insist was
a change of attitude on HPD's part makes the Starrett
suit particularly suspect as the cause of the city's dis-
pleasure. In recent years at least two prominent HPD
officials have left for executive positions at Starrett.
Former Deputy Commissioner Robert Rosenberg is now
General Manager at Starrett, and former Deputy Com-
missioner Peter Josephs also now works for the inter-
national building corporation. "I have to assume the
Letter con tinued
homesteaders ranging in age from 20 to 60. In October/
November 1978, after many of us had already begun the
homesteading process, we submitted our applications to
become part of HPD's Direct Loan, Sweat-Equity
homesteading program.
For over a year now, the city has had tenant profiles
and architectural plans for the renovation of 532, 533,
535 and 537 East 6th St. Not working drawings; just
floor plans, which it took HPD a full half-year to pro-
vide guidelines for and pass through their initial approv-
al stage. We are now "in the pipeline" and. it's dark.
Since this preliminary approval, A Better Way has
been waiting for a Letter of Commitment from HPD
towards the ultimate turning over of these buildings to
the homesteaders. This letter can come only after the
process known as ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review
Procedure) has begun, a process by which NYC accepts
the transfer of title of city-owned property to individ-
uals or cooperatives. This can begin only after HPD's
Engineering Department provides a cost and feasibility
estimate. Six months ago a city engineer surveyed the
buildings for this purpose. The cost-out has remained
on the "back-burner" without even a pilot light under it.
However, it is not inefficiency or inflation we are fight-
ing. It is clear abandonmen.t. First the buildings were
abandoned. Then the city offered hope, and now it is
abandoning even hope"
We continue to work on tQe buildings-raising funds
for minor roofing repairs, winterizing, and the first
steps in rehabilitation. Still, we can barely proceed
city is unhappy about the suit," Rosenberg told City
Limits. "They've done many things to make it a viable
community. The Mayor was just out there for our fifth
birthday party last fall."
HPD has promised a decision on the OHC contract
by May 15th. Should the decision be against them, said
Hoeber, the city has agreed to allocate funding to allow
them to "close up shop." A decision to re-fund the
agency will entail some discussion on the scope of the
work that OHC will be allowed to pursue, as the pro-
posed partial contract which the Center rejected called
for a sharp reduction in counseling, and more stringent
reporting requirements to HPD when the Center
initiates class action suits.
For the time being, while the city deliberates, the
Open Housing Center is without funding, and has
dropped its outreach. campaign and cut back on all
counseling and representation. Civil Rights advocates
are wondering what the present controversy says about
the city's commitment to fair housing. "It shouldn't
rea:liy be surprising," said Paul Davidoff. "When was
the last time you heard the Mayor calling for stronger
affirmative action in this city?" 0
without the city's stamp. We have the full support of
our local community board (#3) and the 6th Street A to
B Block Association which has already petitioned on
our behalf. Our project and others like ours need
support. Sincerely,
The homesteaders of 532, 533, 535, 537 East 6th Street.
To the Editor:
I read with interest Tom Robbins' account of the 417
East 52nd Street rent strike in the March issue. .
The story was especially upsetting to me because in
1971-1972 I had helped the tenants of 565 Crown Street
in Brooklyn, also owned by Milton Kessler, organize to
pressure Kessler to make repairs and provide essential
services. As with 417 East 52nd, 565 Crown was a struc-
turally sound building in need of major upgrading due
to years of owner neglect. As with the East Flatbush
building, the Crown Heights tenants ultimately com-
menced a rent strike after unsuccessfully negotiating
with Kessler.
Kessler's reaction then was remarkably similar to his
more recent effort. He used every vicious tactic in the
book. He tried illegal evictions, threats, verbal and phy-
sical attacks on the tenants. He offered rent strike lead-
ers money to move out. He frequently called in the po-
lice. He reported public assistance recipients to DSS. He
reported an African exchange student to the Immigra-
tion Service.
The results were depressingly similar to the East Flat-
bush building. The tenants were jerked around in
Housing Court (then called Landlord and Tenant
Court) which adjourned the matter time after time and
refused to heed the tenants' attorney's request to impose
15 CITY LlMITS/April1980
1
/
/
/
...... /
,I ...... .
/ ......
\
VILLAGE CENTER REDEVROPMENT
PORT CHEmR, I'oEW YORK
Displacement continued
alition of local agencies and residents, filed a complaint
with the federal Economic Development Administration
over what ABC called exclusion by the Village of minor-
ities in the preparation of a $932,000 public works pro-
posal. A Citizens Advisory Committee named by the
mayor and approved by the Board was found to be
grossly under-representative of the minority community
last year and was reconstructed under orders from the
County.
While activists say the board has a history of
opposing new housing and has rejected projects for
improving the South End for the lower income people
who live there, the Village can . point to an unusually
large stock of 420 public housing units built between
1950 and 1966.
"The Board has not been responsive to the South End
community," said Bill James, a community leader and
22-year resident of Port Chester. Others use less diplo-
matic language. "The Trustees don't give a damn. They
would just as soon do the economic development and
get rid of the people." said community organizer Tom
Sanzillo.
He and other community representatives say the resi-
dents of the redevelopment area are frightened over the
uncertainty of their future. Landlords, they assert, are
raising rents and withdrawing services in anticipation of
the takeover of their properties by the Village.
The issue of relocation raises questions about the
clarity and strength of federal anti-displacement
policies. Although local community groups are clamor-
ing for a "relocation plan," Village housing officials
point out correctly that there is no federal requirement
for such a plan.
However, since the Village is using federal CD funds
to acquire property, those who are displaced fall under
the protection of two laws. Under the Uniform Reloca-
tion Act, the Village cannot force anyone to move
unless replacement housing that is decent, safe, s a n i ~
tary, reasonably convenient and affordable is available.
The Village must inform the affected families about
relocation benefits. Counseling services to ease the
relocation process must be provided. In addition, the
Uniform Act requires the Village to pay moving
expenses and up to $4,000 per renter household to help
meet the increased cost of the replacement dwelling. A
total of $31,734.33 in relocation benefits has been paid
to 14 families and three businesses as of March 31,
according to the housing office.
The second realm of protection is an ambiguously
worded regulation of the Community Development
program that says where CD funds result in displace-
ment, the local government must devise a strategy
describing how it will "mitigate . .. adverse effects" and
assist people to remain in their neighborhoods. There is
no general agreement on what that means.
Opponents of the current redevelopment plan argue
that the Village has never developed a meaningful
strategy. Housing officials respond that several targets,
including a shifting mix of new construction, substantial
and moderate rehabilitation, Section 8 existing housing
subsidies, Public Housing vacancies and small property
rehabilitation have evolved over the years. Little has
been built, however.
The Village's current position, according to Port
Chester Development Director Thomas Hourin, is that
the existing housing supply is capable of absorbing the
additional 30 families that will be displaced between now
and the spring of 1981. After that, he agreed, additional
new or rehabilitated units will be needed in order to
carryon the redevelopment. "If you are talking about
the next step in the redevelopment program, we have to
have replacement housing," Hourin told City Limits.
"I am in full agreement that the Village has to take a
more active position in providing the housing stock, and
the effort has to be accelerated. "
There are a number of signs that government review
agencies that approved this year's CD grant for Port
Chester will be taking a much closer look at the dis-
placement issue in the next round.
Lawrence Salley, director of community development
for Westchester County, said recently that none of Port
Chester's third year grant, if approved by HUD, will be
released by the county until the Village has provided a
16
more detailed strategy for addressing the housing needs
of the displaced families. In addition, he said, his o!Jrce
is inspecting the condition of all of the h o u s i n ~ where
families already moved out by the redevelopment are
living.
And Bette Segal, an official of the Tri-State Regional
Planning Commission, which reviews applications for
federal funds, said, "We will be looking for a plan" titis
year. "We asked last year for a relocation plan. We
acted in good faith, and we felt we would have a plan
before this. The Village has not lived up to their agree-
ment."
Additional pressure on the Board of Trustees to take
. a stronger lead in planning for the additional new and
rehabilitated housing has come from the Citizens Advi-
sory Committee and the local newspaper.
The investment of public funds-such as the case of
Port Chester-is only one, and probably the smallest,
cause of displacement of low and moderate income
people. A larger cause that is less subject to public
control is displacement by private investment. But
equally harmful, however, is the displacing impact of
disinvestment, i.e. abandonment, all of which leaves
policy makers grappling with a huge dilemma that one
housing expert has likened to "dancing on the edge of a
knife."
In a two-part report issued in 1979, HUD said the
amount of displacement caused by federal programs
subject to the Uniform Relocation Act is relatively
small. In Fiscal Year 1977, $123.5 million was paid for
19,000 residential claimants under the act with an
additional 18,000 families awaiting relocation, a sizable
drop over previous years.
HUD estimated that more than 500,000 households
per year were displaced between 1974 and 1976 as the
result of private and public activity.
In a recent survey of 31 U.S. cities, a Community
Legal Services Inc. task force on community develop-
ment found substantial displacement in 25. In 18 of
those 25, the local governments acknowledged that sub-
stantial displacement was a problem. Only 14 of the 25
had developed anti-displacement strategies, the survey
said, and only two of those, Chicago and Minneapolis,
has what could be called comprehensive strategies.
Among cities with displacement problems that have
no anti-displacement strategy at all are Jackson, Miss.,
Austin, Texas; Savannah, Georgia; New Bedford,
Mass.; and Cincinnati, Ohio, the survey said,
concluding;
"Thus, HUD is giving little attention to the displace-
ment problem, and we must conclude that it is not
effectively implementing the 1977 amendments to the
CDBG program," the task force said.
In its displacement report, HUD said it had adopted
as a general goal a policy that no person should be dis-
placed as a direct result of a HUD or HUD-assisted pro-
gram unless an affordable, decent, safe and sanitary
replacement dwelling is available. It said an effort
should be made to minimize displacement in connection
with federal programs and that where such displacement
is unavoidable, appropriate relocation assistance should
be provided.
HUD officials say that including a broader range of
programs under the requirement of relocation benefits
is the best approach to minimizing displacement. Others
believe the agency could take stronger measures to pre-
vent displacement and insure that federal programs are
designed for the benefit of the present as well as future
residents of low and moderate income neighborhoods .
"My view is that we will never stop displacement as
long as it is a secondary objective," said Cushing
Dolbeare, director of the National Low Income Hous-
ing Coalition in Washington. "What should be done is
put an end to displacement first and have everything else
follow."
Last November, a National 1'leighborhood Platform
Convention in Louisville, Kentucky adopted a "grass-
roots, national agenda for the 1980s" that advocated
"residential stability" as a major goal.
"It is our conviction that human beings cannot
achieve their fullest potential under the constant threat
of displacement," Milton Kotler, executive director of
the National Association of Neighborhoods, told a
Congressional subcommittee in March at a hearing on
the reauthorization of the Housing and Community De-
velopment Act. "To most fully develop our citizens and
our nation, residential security must be seen as a human
right, except under conditions of particular urgency.
Because of the language of the Act, this fundamental
right can now be regularly violated. "
The national neighborhood platform urged Congress
to change the focus of the law from one of relocation
and spatial deconcentration to one of residential stabil-
ity. It also recommends that approval of CD and Urban
Development Action Grant applications be conditioned
on the development and implementation of effective
displacement prevention plans.
Legislation introduced by Rep. Parren Mitchell,
Democrat of Baltimore, would set stiffer anti-displace-
ment standards and require CD applicants to analyze
the causes and estimate the scale of displacement and
devise a strategy for ending it a:s part of their proposal
for funds.
Other legislation proposed by Sen. Jim Sasser, Demo-
crat of Tennessee, would set up one agency to establish
a single uniform set of relocation regulations, instead of
the existing "inconsistent, inequitable and confusing"
array of guidelines currently administered by 13 federal
agenices. The bill would also extend coverage of
relocation benefits to any of those displaced by any
agency with the power to acquire property and would
increase payments to keep pace with inflation.
17
CITY LlMITS/ApriI1980
Elsie Sistrunk and two of her children in the apartment at 31 Willow Street where they were "temporarily" relocated from a dangerous
building, now boarded up, across the street.
For many different reasons, a number of proposals to
create new and rehabilitated housing in Port Chester
have collapsed in recent years. One plan to rehabilitate
78 units for low income families kicked around for three
years, during which time the figure fluctuated as the
developer lost land options. The project finally died
after HUD said the cost was too high and the developer
was unable to obtain financing. Village and County
officials acknowledge privately that the plan was a
"loser. "
Another plan to build and rehabilitate 128 units of
senior citizen housing on the so-called Kingsport site ran
into trouble at HUD because it did not include family
units. That project still seems to be the Village's best bet
at the moment if the Trustees 'can agree on a location to
create additional family housing. A developer is
currently studying the feasibility of a site along the West
Side of South Main Street in the redevelopment area. If
that does not work, the Village is practically back to
square one.
This is a critiCal period of time for Port Chester's
future. Most observers agree that the redevelopment-
with all of the economic benefits it is expected to bring
-depends on the willingness of the Village to make a
strong show of support to provide the housing that will
be needed by the displaced families. A green light today
would still mean a two-year wait before the housing was
CITY L1MITS/ApriI1980
18
available.
But years of polarization and lack of communication
between the Board and the lower income population
have created a hostile and suspicious atmosphere that is
obviously not conducive to the accommodation that
many see as necessary for solving the housing problem.
"There has to be an understanding on both sides of
the fence," said one knowledgeable observer. "The
Board has to understand that they have to replace the
units they reduce the housing stock by. If the village
does not come up with the replacement housing, it is
finished at HUD. But the advocacy groups have to
realize that they cannot stop the project dead in its
tracks. Who will that be serving?
"There is inexperience on both sides, partially be-
cause there is no development history here for people to
get used to dealing with each other. Instead, there is too
much grandstanding that is not followed up by nego-
tiations." 0
PLANNERS NETWORK
A Planners Network regional conference is scheduled
for May 10 at Avery Hall, Columbia University, begin-
ning at 8:30 a.m. The purpose is to discuss the forma-
tion of a union of progressive planners and to consider
program proposals. For further information contact
Bob Beauregard, (201) 932-4053.
COUNCIL APPROVES 750/0 FUEL PASS-ALONG
The City Council voted 23 to 20 on April 17 to let
landlords pass along 75 per cent of their increased fuel
costs to tenants in about 400,000 rent-controlled apart-
ments. The new law also provides for the phasing in of a
hotly contested measure designed to foster fuel conser-
vation. Councilman Stanley Michels, Democrat of
Manhattan, announced that he would file a legal chal-
lenge against the law on the grounds that the Council
had violated its own rules of procedure.
The law, retroactive to January 1, will immediately
add about $3.25 per room-a-month to rents.
The City Council vote erased the temporary victory
that tenants won on March 18 when the Council leader-
ship proved unable to guarantee passage of an earlier
version of the pass-along bill and sent it back to the
Housing and Building Committee. Because Mayor Koch
had placed a high priority on the bill, the tenants were
elated that their persuasion had forced the leadership to
retreat.
Koch spent several hours trying to persuade reluctant
Council members to vote for his bill. The Black and
Puerto Rican Caucus and Robert Steingut, Democrat of
Brooklyn, were lobbied heavily by Majority Leader
Thomas Cuite, HPD's Ron Marino and Koch during
the meeting.
Tenants stood in line outside City Hall for up to two
hours to gain entry to the Council meeting, which was
prolonged until 7 p.m. by a combination of postpone-
ments, recesses, absences and procedural delays. Some
tenants waited until after 5 p.m. before they were
allowed upstairs.
At several points Council President Carol Bellamy,
presiding over the initial hours of the session, was ob-
viously annoyed at the procedural irregularities, especi-
ally the reluctance of some Council members to stop
their lobbying in the committee room and appear on the
floor of the Chamber.
After four hours of maneuvering, Committee Chair-
man Thomas Manton, Democrat of Queens, sponsored
a motion to refer the bill back to his committee to
incorporate revisions.
As originally written, the bill would have enabled
landlords to pass 80 per cent of their fuel cost increases
on to their rent controlled tenants. The landlords would
have been eligible for the passalong on an annual
maximum of 230 gallons per room, dropping to 200
gallons in 1985.
The new bill drops the passalong to 75 per cent and
phases in the reduction in eligibility over a four-year
rather than six-year span.
It came as a surprise to Council members when
Manton, at 5 p.m. on March 26, called a committee
meeting for 9 a.m. the following morning. One commit-
tee member, Wendell Foster, Democrat of the Bronx,
never received notification and, although he was around
City Hall on both the 26th and the morning of the 27th,
did not find out that his committee had voted the bill
out until that afternoon's full Council meeting.
Despite the last minute notice they received, many
more tenants than Council members were present at the
committee meeting for the 6 to 2 vote to reduce the
tenant's share of the fuel increase passalong.
Michels charged that the vote was illegal because the
committee meeting was called on the same day as a
scheduled City Council meeting in violation of Council
rules. 0
Joan Brinton
For four years, City Limits has been giving its subscribers in New York and
other cities:
timely reports and analyses on critical issues affecting low and moderate
income neighborhoods.
important information about the pioneering steps being taken by tenant,
neighborhood and other nonprofit groups to revitalize their endangered commun
ities.
A tripling of our readership in one year is testimony to the growing interest in
the grass roots movement to save housing and preserve neighborhoods. Beyond
housing, City Limits brings you the latest news on community development, bank
lending, alternative energy and many other related issues . .
Published 10 times a year, City Limits is perhaps the most important pipeline
between the inner sanctums of government policy makers and the neighborhoods
where programs are implemented.
Because City Limits covers both theory and practice it is an invaluable aid to
both planners and community organizers, government officials and neighborhood
leaders.
City Limits is only $6 a year for individuals and $20 for organizations. To sub
scribe, just fill out the form.
19 CITY LlMITS/April1980
POOR HOUSING FOR MENTALLY DISABLED
HARMS 'COMMUNITY LIVING' POLICY
Part II
This report examines how the ,diminishing supply and often wretched conditions of low-cost housing have
sharply complicated the adjustment of a large segment of the estimated 60,000 former mental patients who have
been released from psychiatric iktitutions into communities since 1965 in New York State. It was written by
Ellen Baxter and Kim Hopper of the Institute for Social Welfare Research of the Community Service Society.
An expanded version of their .report appears in the current issue of Health/PAC Bulletin.
SROs-The "SRO phenomenon" as it has been
called-characterized as "the conspicuous clustering of
deviant single people in specific buildings"-had its
origins in the housing shortage produced by the wartime
migration of workers and servicemen in the forties.
Landlords suddenly found it profitable to convert tene-
ments into single-room occupancy hotels. The postwar
economic boom attracted families as well, who huddled
in cramped quarters while breadwinners attempted to
gain some measure of financial security.
Today, SRO residents, paying around $150/month,
live in tiny rooms and share bathroom and kitchen facil-
ities at the end of the hall. Some officials talk as though
it were planned that way, to accord with the needs of the
tenants. According to the National Executive Board on
SROs:
kitchens and private bathrooms are
often not considered necessary by
many older people who have never had
them. Heat, security and cleanliness
are much more important to the qual-
ity of life of tenants thaIf room size or
even private bathrooms.
The present reality is that SRO tenants exist at the
mercy of SRO landlords who consider heat, security,
cleanliness, room size and private bathrooms only in
terms of their interest in collecting maximum rent and
maintaining a high occupancy tate. Conditions are, with
rare exception, severely wanting. The following news-
paper description is not atypical:
The halls and stairways are dimly lit,
unswept, littered with debris and fallen
plaster. Throughout the halls, there's
the stink of toilets overflowing with
paper, feces and urine. Some of the
toilets haven't worked in months. Elec-
trical wires are exposed where plaster
has been knocked out of the walls.
Doors to the rooms have been broken,
patched with boards. Locks have been
gouged.
Robberies and assaults are common, most of them
never reported. Obviously, the more defenseless are the
easiest prey. One hotel on the Upper West Side was cited
CITY LIM ITS/Apri I 1980
for over 250 violations of the City Health Code and its
owner fined $37,500; it remains in operation while the
case is in litigation.
The figures of ex-patients in SROs range from to,OOO
to 20,000 with the greatest concentrations on the Upper
West Side and Murray Hill areas. The Department of
Social Services has provided o n - ~ i t e assistal}ce to tenants
of SROs for several years, including hot lunclt pro-
grams, recreational and rehabilitation programs staffed
by case workers and part-time physicians and nurses.
But the great majority of SROs have no supportive pro-
grams. In the past, managers agreed to have programs
in hopes of getting more referrals and hence a higher
occupancy rate. Now empty units are scarce, and the
rooms in which the programs operate could be rented
out.
Several forces have exacerbated the conditions for
SRO residents. The City'S 1-51 program grants general
tax abatements (which total approximately $40 million
annually) to developers who convert SROs jnto middle/
upper class residential housing-clearly the more profit-
able real estate holding. This has led to the closing of
several SROs and dislocation of their residents. Har-
rassment of tenants by owners eager to empty their
buildings for conversion has included the use of dogs
and sawed-off shotguns at early morning hours; some
SROs have been emptied over a weekend. Tenants,
especially disabled ones, rarely exercise their legal rights
to prevent such harrassment. In addition to the number
20
of SROs that have closed, others have raised their prices
above the designated lower-priced hotel level.
PPHAs-Another substantial number of discharged
psychiatric patients, approximately 6,650, reside in the
state's notorious private proprietary homes for adults,
with the greatest concentration in the New York City
metropolitan area. An investigative report by the
Deputy Attorney General (March, 1979) exposed the
pervasiveness of
unhealthy, unsanitary, and unsafe
living conditions, poor nutrition, fail-
ure to provide even minimal services
and recreational programs, deficiencies
relating to medical care and t h ~ admin-
istration of medication and numerous
violations of local buildings, fire and
safety codes.
The questionable circumstances around several
deaths of PPHA residents and numerous suicides
underscore the extreme precariousness of their living
conditions.
Adult home residents are entitled to $444 per month
through supplemental security income payments, of
which all but an $18 to $38 personal allowance goes to
the adult home. The minimal income of the adult home
industry in the State has been estimated at $8.4 million
monthly. "Activity programs" range from the well-in-
tended but infantilizing to the downright ludicrous. One
case manager reported to us a particularly poignant in-
stance in which she was trying to recruit for a sewing
group women who spent 40 years in the sweatshops
as garment workers.
Tbe SbeIters-The Men's Shelter located on the
Bowery provides meals, showers, clothing and medical
care to approximately 10,000 men annually. The State
Department of Social Services licenses and funds 50 per
cent of the Shelter's operating costs; the City matches
this amount. A study in 1976 based on 1,235 men pro-
vided with sleeping accomodations on a given night
found that 30 per cent of them had previous psychiatric
hospitalization. This is usually not the "planned"
destiny of discharged patients. The supervisor of the
Shelter's psychiatric unit has been quoted as saying,
Most of the men don't come directly
from the State hospital ... usually com-
munity plans are made for them, but
they fall apart ... Either they are
thrown out of their SRO, their welfare
has stopped or they never followed
through with referrals to a clinic.
The Shelter serves three meals a day to approximately
1,500 men and dispenses 800 lodging vouchers which are
redeemable in one of the Bowery lodging (flop) houses
under contract with the Men's Shelter. A state author-
ized liquor store on the corner has a steady clientele.
During the winter, 1,200 men seek lodging each night.
21
When the Shelter exhausts its supply of vouchers, the re-
maining men are permitted to sleep on a concrete floor
in the "big room" at the Shelter. Once the "big room"
is filled to capacity, the men are turned back into the
street. Presently, upwards of 200 men are being turned
away every night.
A recent city report concluded that the Shelter "re-
sembles nothing so much as a 19th century asylum."
Communities are justifiably outraged when their
streets are turned into running sewers because the
Shelter can only supply 2 toilets for the 500 men who eat
there. They are understandably upset when men wander
their streets aimlessly all day, because the flophouses
they sleep in at night throw them out at 7-8 in the morn-
ing and will not allow them back in until late afternoon.
But neither of these concerns has to do with the disabili-
ties of the ex-inmate or wino. They have to do with a
deeper, structural absurdity: the circumstances under
which such people find themselves struggling to survive.
Proposed Solutions
Surveying the proposals recently put forward to deal
with severe housing shortage for damaged, dependent
people in New York City is a gloomy exercise-one is
hard pressed to decide which is worse: the problem or
the proposed solutions. The "problem" recently has
been that the nettlesome presence of such individuals
has made itself felt; it has become visible. The solutions,
it will be noted, all have the effect of removing objects
from the public's eye.
Camp LaGuardia, a 1,000 bed facility operated by
DSS in upstate New York, claims to restore men's
health through "fresh air, nutritious food, proper rest
and work training." The regimen has reminded more
than one observer of the workhouses of the 19th
century. Men from the Shelter are encouraged to go
there and stay indefinitely.
Two islands, Wards and North Brothers, are also
being considered for the surplus Shelter population. On
Wards Island, the State Office of Mental Health owns a
vacant building which was formerly part of Manhattan
Psychiatric Center. The Island is simultaneously being
considered for four other undesirable and dependent
populations. North Brothers Island is owned by the City
in the waters off the South Bronx. The buildings here
were formerly used for tuberculosis treatment. One
minor problem with this site is that there is no access to
the island.
The State Office of Mental Health has proposed to
convert empty buidlings on the grounds of mental
institutions that no longer meet federal and State regula-
tions for accreditation into "domiciliary care facilities"
(DCF's). The buildings would be occupied by residents
transferred from the inpatient buildings across the
paths, in-patients now in substandard housing in the
community and a peculiar undefined category, "the
new chronics." Residents of the DCFs have none of the
rights (i.e., right to treatment, right to minimum wage
remuneration for labor performed and rights around
the process of committment and discharge) that have
been won by patients' activists in recent years, which are
limited, for the most part, to inpatient settings.
Others, less concerned with cosmetic surgery, have
rediscovered the madhouse in its classical form. An
NIMH study re-affirms that "custody and asylum" are
permanent institutional needs in any society. Now that
inpatient costs of treating a patient in a psychiatric
hospital have risen to $30,000 per year, it is unlikely that
the State will reinstitutionalize many, at least not within
the same highly regulated structures. More likely, old
institutional forms will be tinkered with to create less
costly structures.
Rows of cots in a state armory are being considered a
possible emergency measure for the homeless during the
upcoming winter months. A high proportion of these
will be mentally disabled people. It will operate for a
five month period, putting the men back on the streets
in the spring.
Institutional Care
To criticize the forms community care has taken does
not imply by any means that institutional care is the
alternative. Recent arguments that the mental hospital
has a new role to play in advocating on behalf of the
mentally disabled or that it is a necessary and supportive
part of "the community" strain credulity. While the
names of public institutions for the mentally disabled
have changed from lunatic asylums and "farms for the
insane" to state hospitals, and most recently to mental
health institutes or psychiatric centers to reflect the
changing times, the conditions for individuals inside
remain deplorable.
It is often said that individuals living in SROs, the
Shelters and on the streets do not contact or respond to
available services for fear of being rehospitalized,
indicating that although community living may be in-
hospitable, even treacherous, the institution is worse.
The commonly stated prerequisite for successful com-
munity survival-readily available and sufficient mental
health services-bears examining, because the "more
services" mentality is a deeply ingrained and widely pro-
claimed one, receiving its latest and most illustrious
endorsement from the President's Commission on
Mental Health. What the mentally disabled need is not
more services, but a more decent life. Primary among
their basic needs is a safe, humane place to live. One ex-
patient has described his situation as follows:
I realize you got to have a place to live
when you leave the hospital, and (pa-
tients) take what they can find ... (But
in an SRO) you're still isolated and by
yourself. Most of all, you aren't living
in a place that you chose for yourself.
It was simply arranged for you . . .
Many of us with just a little help, could
live with each other in a real apartment
of our own.
The obstacles are formidable. Service bureaucracies
are ingrown, overweight and firmly entrenched; in a
period of fiscal cutbacks, their priority is their own
survival. In "the field," mental health workers tiptoe
daily round the edge of despair: demoralization is
rampant, caseloads are huge and efforts at finding
decent housing for their charges are futile when there is
none to be had. The "helpfulness" of such professions
is no longer self-evident-not even to themselves.
Finally, public disgust has scaled new heights in its out-
rage over the eyesore of the sidewalk psychotic. Even re-
constructed liberals, survivors of all the failures of the
Great Society, are heard to mutter: "I don't care what
you do with them, just get them off my street."
It is not enough to encourage ex-patients to "hold
out" until the next turn of prosperity arrives, Nor Will it
do to simply shuttle them off to a well-ordered oblivion.
If the city were really serious about its concern for the
plight of the discharged mental patient, there would be
legislation providing incentives for upgrading the condi-
tions of low-income housing; there would be shelter
which respected the privacy and dignity of even the un-
washed and deranged; there would, in short, be both
short-term refuges and long-term possibilities for setting
up home by oneself or with others.
Fluctuations in the real estate market, cost saving
measures by the state and a city in crisis have forced the
mentally disabled to live in expensive, unsafe, substand-
ard housing, and at the extreme, on the streets. Their
fears and unusual behavior are largely reactions to intol-
erable conditions. Shelter is a fundamental human need;
it is not a mental health service to be given and wit held
on the basis of one's mental status. It does not require
mental health expertise to know that security and stabil-
ity of environment promotes stability of mind. 0
Letter continued
sanctions on Kessler, who flagrantly ignored court
orders to make repairs. Kessler was also aided by his
various connections to the Brooklyn Democratic Party;
at the time of the 565 Crown Street rent strike he was on
the payroll of then-Councilmember Howard Golden,
now Borough President. After several months of
harassment by Kessler and non-action by the court, the
rent strike was broken. While the building was not
vacated, several tenants moved, either voluntarily or
forcibly. By this time almost half the apartments were
unoccupied, and the condition of the building was far
worse than when the strike had begun.
22
The most important failure in my opinion is that of
the city and the courts to protect citizens from this
special kind of violence which is visited upon residents
of low-income neighborhoods by slumlords. Have
things improved since 1972? I don't think so.
Sincerely,
Michael McKee
alling it an "innovative
approach to targeting
scarce resources," New
York City will spend its
entire $259 million bud-
get of Community Devel-
opment funds to improve the attractiveness of Rocke-
feller , Center and restore the sagging Midtown tourist
spot to the position of popularity it once enjoyed.,
Cynics' Limits has learned that the CD funds will be
used to redecorate and air condition three restaurants in
the famous Plaza, refashion the skating rink's imposing
bronze sculpture into a likeness of the late Nelson Rock-
efeller, demolish the IND subway station to make room
for a 1,000-car parking garage, retrofit the Rockettes
with new costumes, purchase new ornaments for the
Christmas Tree and pay relocation benefits (up to
$5,000 per employee under current Uniform Relo.cation
Act rules) to Exxon Corporation for acquisition of its
' property. ' "
"It is true that many important seCtions of New York,
especially those we once designated as neighborhood
strategy areas, will have to do without CD funds for the
next few years," Mayor Koch-22 told reporters at a
news conference during which he speed skated around
the renowned rink. "But it is also important to
remember that Rockefeller Center is one of New York's
most dramatic sunken neighborhoods, and has some
very strong community-based organizations there. I
should ignore them?"
The New York HUD office said the city's unusual
interpretation of targeting would be reviewed carefully,
but one official said the CD application "appears to be
in substantial compliance with federal regulations and
consistent with past city long range urban development
plans." Noted advocate non-planner Ron Schiffperson
of the Pruitt-Igoe Center s'aid he was "outraged" by the
city's application. "This is a blatant violation of the
spirit of the law," he said. "Clearly as owner of Radio
City, UDC should pay for the Rockette's costumes."
In a related move, HPD has consolidated all of its
existing housing loan programs into a new "Procrastin-
ation Loan Program" that housing officials said reflects
a major shift in priorities. The new program will take
funds away from housing rehabilitation and put them
into a counseling service to help applicants cope with the
endless delays that have characterized housing loans in
the past.
"We have seen a disturbing increase in the rate of
severe depression and other pathological symptoms
among applicants to our loan programs," Commission-
er Anthony Glider said in announcing the appointment
of Dr. Joyce Brothers, the noted therapist, as assistant
commissioner in charge of Procrastination Loans. The
mayor's office released a statement calling the Procras-
tination Loan program "exactly the kind of rational
policy approach that this administration is known for . "
Koch-22 also announced that all city-owned housing
will be converted back to cold water flats under an
amended version of the J-51 law, which provides tax
bonuses for housing deterioration. The mayor denied
charges that the policy was aimed at driving low income
tenants out of the buildings to make them more appeal-
ing to speculators. He called the charges "the usual
round of wild and baseless accusations put forth by
wackos and enemies of the city who still do not
understand that anyone who disagrees with me is selfish
and irresponsible and unreasonable." Koch-22 used the
occasion to commend Glider on his idea for settling the
transit strike on the same terms as the former Article
8-A Loan program-3 per cent over 15 years.
Meanwhile, on the national political scene, President
Carter retu'rned to the abandoned Charlotte Street
neighborhood in the South Bronx where he stood 2 Y2
years ago and pledged the help of the federal govern-
ment in wiping out urban decay. However, because of a
communications miscue perfected by his staff, Carter
arrived expecting to find shiny new housing on the bleak
site. Instead, all he saw was the same panorama of
rubble and garbage that made him sick 30 months ago.
After several minutes of awkward silence, during which
Carter searched vainly for some sign of new or rehabili-
tated housing, HUD Secretary Moonbeam Landrieu
stepped forward on the lunar-like surface and said,
"One small step backwards for man, a giant shuffle
sideways for the Administration."
Following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Deputy
Commissioner William Emmett has resigned from HPD
only two weeks after a very flattering article about him
appeared in House Beautiful magazine. Emmett said he
had accepted a high-paying job with a national
distributor of St. Georges designer blue jeans.
And finally, Real Estate Monthly announced that
former Housing Commissioner Roger Startover had
been named to the editorial board. Startover was laid
off recently by the New York Times in what Times
officials called "an unfortunate but neccessary cutback
in staff which we refer to around here as planned
shrinkage. "
At Rockefeller Center, the mayor, summing up his
press conference's momentous announcements, beamed
broadly and said: "That just about does it; huh? Are
there any other problems to solve? If I do say so myself
I think I'm doing pretty good." 0
23
To: The Editors, CITY LIMITS, Association of Neighborhood Housing Developers. Inc.
115 East 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010
Please enter my subscription for one year (10 Issues) to CITY LIMITS.
o Private businesses, founda.tlons, banks, government agencies and city-
wide groups - $20.00
o Individuals and community-based organizations - $6.00
Enclosed Is my check for $ ______ , payable to ANHD / CITY LIMITS.
Name: ______________________________________________________________
Address: ________________________________________________ _
City Limits
115 East 23rd Street
New York, N.Y. 10010
IN THIS ISSUE
Displacement. p. 2
. Federal Budget Cuts. p. 6
Fair Housing. p. 12
Housing the Mentally Disabled. Part II. p. 20
Belated April Fools. p. 23
Second-class po$tage paid New York, N.Y. 10001

City Limits Magazine, April 1980 Issue

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