city limits magazine, december 1996 issue

8/3/2019 City Limits Magazine, December 1996 Issue

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Athe time being, Governor George Pataki could not be happier.The federal government is giving New York State a big fat $450 million hike in welfare money to spend over the next 12 months. Why?Because Congress used 1994-1995 budget numbers to calculate howmuch the states should receive under the new federal welfare law. Sincethere were more people on public assistance at that time than there are

..-...........- ,...,.....-EDITORIAL

today, New York gets the extra money.Pataki is taking the promise of extra cash as anopportunity to drive state welfare policy fullspeed into a hairpin turn. Under the governor'sproposal, state welfare benefit levels would becut for most families between 10percent and 45percent, depending on how long they are on therolls. Instead of cash support, the governor offersvows of great sincerity, promising that New York will invest sufficientmoney in day care andjob programs to move these families into thelabor force .All this might be believable, except for the fact that New York Statehas never spent all the money the federal government placed at its dis posal for developing decent welfare-to-jobs programs in years past. In1994, more than 10percent of the funds offered to New York by the fed eral welfare job training program remained unclaimed because thestate didn't want to pick up extra administrative costs of he program.Now New York will receive up to $2.3 billion-all its federal welfaregrant-to do with as it pleases. Based on past experience, it's a safe betAlbany 's politicians will break the promise of creating enough effective,large-scale employment and day care programs to make "welfare-towork" more than just a cynical joke on the poor.In act , there is more reason to believe New York will move in theopposite direction. Pataki 's proposed welfare plan is more punitive thanthe federal law, thanks to his proposal to cut welfare fami lies' annualcash income from the $6,900 range (for a family of our) to as low as$3,800 a year-even before the five-year limit kicks in. The need foremployment supports will be extraordinary.A strong new report from the National Association of ChildAdvocates, "Ready, Willing and Able ?What the Record Shows AboutState Investments in Children, 1990-1995," reads like a cautionary taleagainst welfare devolution. In the past, when states have been givenhandfuls offederal money to spend "creatively," they have shirked theirresponsibilities toward low-income people. Thankfully, federal rulesand guidelines have always made sure the state safety net was kept inplace. That's history now.And as for that extra $450 million? Pataki plans to spread much of itaround to the municipalities right away. But the federal welfare blockgrants to states won't be increasing in years to come, no matter whathappens to the economy. Better put that money somewhere safe-it willbe needed down the road.

AndrewWhiteEditor

City LimitsVolume XXI Number 10

City Limits ispublished ten times per year. monthly exceptbi-monthly issues in June/Julyand August/Sep tember, bythe City Limits Community Information Service. Inc a nonprofit organization devoted to disseminating informationconce rn ing neighborhood revitalization.Editor: Andrew WhiteSenior Editors: Kim Nauer, Genn ThrushManaging Editor: Robin EpsteinSpec ial Pro jects Ed itor: Kierna MayoContributing Editors: James Brad ley, Rob PolnerDesign Direct ion : James Conrad. Paul V. LeoneAdvertising Representat ive: Faith WigginsProofreader: Sandy SocolarPhotographers: Ana Asian, Eric WolfInterns: Kristine Blomgren, John Ha rlacherSponsors:Association for Neighborhood and

Housing Development, Inc.Pratt Institute Center for Communityand Environmental Development

Urban Homesteading Assistance BoardBoard of Directors:Eddie Bautista. New York Lawyers for

the Public InterestBeverly Cheuvront. City HarvestFrancine Justa, Neighborhood Housing ServicesErrol Louis, Central Brooklyn PartnershipShawn Dove, Rheedlen CentersRebecca Reich, Low Income Housing FundAndrew Reicher, UHABTom Robbins, JournalistJay Small, ANHDDoug Turetsky, former City Limits EditorPete Williams, Nationa l Urban League' Affiliations for identification only

Subscription rates are: for individuals and communitygroups, $25/0ne Year, $35/Two Years; for businesses,foundations, banks, government agencies and libraries,$35/0ne Year, $50/Two Yea rs. Low income, unemployed .$1 O/One Year.City Limits welcomes comments and article contributions.Please include a stamped. self-add ressed envelope forreturn manuscripts. Material in City Limits does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the sponsoring organizations.Send correspondence to: City Limits, 40 Prince St., NewYork, NY 10012. Postmaster : Send address changes to CityLimits, 40 Prince St., NYC 10012.

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Copyright t996 . All Rights Reserved . Noportion or portions of this ournal may be reprinted wi thout the express permission of the publishers.City Limits is indexed in the Alternative PressIndex and the Avery Index to ArchitecturalPeriodicals and is available on microfilm from UniversityMicrofilms International, Ann Arbor, M148106.

CITY LIMITS


3/32DECEMBER 1996

FEATURESConey Island 's Wild RideLong isolated, neglected and prey to drug thugs and joblessness, thepalisade of projects on Brooklyn's Riviera are making a startlingcomeback, thanks to better policing and stricter controls over whogets apartments. But Coney Island's future is still up in the air.By Glenn Thrush and Stuart MilleCourting Scandalast February, a Manhattan housing court judge pleaded guilty totaking payoffs from landlords in the bathroom outside his courtroom.Secret court documents now show how easily corruption fits with theculture of Housing Court-and how long a road would-be reformersmust tread . By Matthew GoldsteinTime Forgottenorrisania Hospital's rebirth in the South Bronx is a welcomechange for the neighborhood-but it also signals the passing of aonce-glorious symbol of urban hope. By Camilo Jose Vergara

PIPELINESBallot Brigaden the past, getting voters to the polls has been the job of party regulars.But in November, Metro IAF assembled an army of precinct captainswho got out the vote in the name of community power. By Robin EpsteinEnemies, A Housing Storyeighborhood housing groups have cut their teeth in tenant organizing,but now a city program aimed at the grassroots is turning them fromtenant tigers into landlord-loving lambs. By Glenn ThrushBlunting Sharptoniuliani and the Democrat mayoral wannabes are trying to write offRev. Al as City Hall's spoiler, but mainstream black politicians can'tafford to ignore his influence with their voters. By Ron Howell

CityviewJustice in FlamesReviewSpecial Deliveries

BriefsATempest in HarlemKeeping Families WholeEditorial

COMMENTARY

DEPARTMENTS

7 LettersJob AdsProfessional

2 Directory

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HI.tory L on IRobin Epstein's article on collaborativeorganizing as practiced by Michael Eichler('The De-Activist," October 1996) wouldbenefit from historical perspective.Partnership with power grew out of settlement house efforts in the late 19th century,when executives enlisted the rich to makecommon cause with the oppressed.Henry Street Settlement Director HelenHall 's interest in community betterment inthe 1960s gave rise to Mobilization forYouth on the Lower East Side. The group'soriginal design involved an Eichler-styleboard which represented theEstablishment , including the mayor, and aconfrontational, Alinsky-style staff organization. The two could not live in the samehouse. Staff were attacked as Communists.I became an executive maintaining somestreet-level organizing, but with lessemphasis on confrontation and more onservice delivery.Mobilization 's original collaborativedesign was adopted by PresidentKennedy's Committee on JuvenileDelinquency , on which I served. Citiesacross the country established Eichlertype boards. These were the ancestors ofthe War on Poverty's Council AgainstPoverty, which, seeking maximum feasible participation of the poor, encouragedAlinsky-style organizations-untilCongress rebelled and cut funding .The moral: both methods serve a common purpose. Collaboration may be stimulated by confrontation. And without atleast the threat of confrontation, what youcan do by collaboration is severely limited.Bertram BeckGraduate School ofSocial ServiceFordham UniversityHI.tory L on II

This letter is prompted by your wonderfully titled article, 'The De-Activist." Forsome time I've been meaning to write andtell you how much I enjoy your magazine,especially your pieces on organizing."Consensus Organizing" or its equivalent, is not new. The "dual approach" wasproposed in mainline Protestant circles inthe 1960s as a consensus-building alternati ve to Alinsky, suggesting partnershipsbetween the wealthy and inner-citychurches. The continuing decline in manyAmericans' standard of living and thepaternalism that characterized these effortsDECEMBER 1996

sent them to the dust-bin of history.The 1920s' partnerships betweencompany unions and their employerswere quickly laid to rest by theDepression . In the post-World War II era,with the CIO's expulsion of left-wingunions and labor 's search for respectability, such approaches made a comeback in"joint" efforts between management andlabor. The unions were generally "juniorpartners" and workers ended up on theshort end.Earlier still, plantation owners spoke oftheir happy slaves, blaming Northern agitators for abolition sentiment.What motivates Eichler, though perhaps important to his friends and rus conscience, is generally beside the point.What is worth noting is how rus approachfunctions-who benefits, who loses andwho decides, and why at tills time itreceives such support. We are in a periodof increasingly widespread alienation inAmerican society, a time of withdrawalfrom engagement with centers of power

and, indeed, withdrawal from society in general. Eichler 's is one ofthe options for with-

------..--.-:.' ''.-LETTERS

drawal from major issues of social andeconomic injustice.There are many others.That corporations which have raped partsof the country with their profit-maximization-at-all-costs policies want to look goodshould not surprise us. It is rare for those whorule to do so solely with an iron fist.But community organizers continue tofind that patience, a commitment to localpeople deciding the destiny of their ownorganizations and believable proposals foraction still work. A new generation oforganizers in the labor movement is fmding the same thing. Like others in thesestreams before him, Eichler will onlymuddy Perrier waters.Mike MillerExecutive DirectorOrganize Training CenterSan Francisco, CA

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City Limits invites you to aluncheon, forum and press conferenceFor the official launching of the

Cfntfr for an Urban ~ u t u r f A new public policy institute and City Limits' partner organizationAnd the announcement ofour first policy proposal:

NfiCJhborhood JUsti(fAommunity RfsponSf to Juvfnilf (rimf

A plan to strengthen our neighborhoods, make streets saferand give young New Yorkers in the criminal justice system tools

to turn their lives around.

Cty Limits is launching the Center for an Urban Future, aninstitute designed to reframe New York's public policydebate . Mter 20 years of community-based reporting , weare establishing a partner organization to promote creativepublic policy that will strengthen New York's neighborhoods and lead to systemic change.The Center for an Urban Future willbe proactive, crafting affordable and humane proposals based on experience, not rhetoric.The Center for an Urban Future (CUF) has chosen juvenile justice forits first policy proposal, targeting a system in desperate need of reform.Though adult crime rates have been dropping, there has been little changein the number of crimes committed by young people. The current juvenilejustice system is a turnstile-70 percent of the juveniles it releases windup back in the system within two years. Young offenders too often do notreceive the tools they desperately need to turn their lives around and contribute to a stronger city.Rather than improve the system, most government leaders have optedto abandon reform and, instead, shift the burden of juvenile offenders tothe adult correctional system. This extreme measure compromises publicsafety. Research clearly indicates that young offenders in adult jails are

damaged in ways that lead them to commit more serious crimes .With the current debate locked into a counterproductive reliance onmore courts and jails, CUF set out to fmd solutions from the expertsorganizers, government workers, neighborhood youth groups, social service practitioners and academics. CUF convened these experts in roundtable sessions and one-on-one interviews , and combined their input withour own research to develop a reform agenda that works for both neighborhoods and youth.On January 9th , CUF will release the product of this collaboration:"Neighborhood Justice: A Community Response to Juvenile Crime," acomprehensive and affordable plan for reform that places neighborhoods, not government, at the center of the juvenile justice system.Neighborhood Justice holds offenders accountable and ensures publicsafety through community courts for nonviolent offenders, increasedsentencing options for judges, crisis intervention teams that assist victims at the point of violence, and improved aftercare programs to trackand integrate all juveniles once they are released from correctional facilities. With Neighborhood Justice, CUF will begin to move the policydebate toward the equitable and cost-saving goals that all New Yorkersare looking for.

Thursday, January 9th, 1991, 12:00 noon.At th. UJAlf.d.ration buildinCJ, 130 'ast 59th Strt, Ballroom A.

Spac. is limit.d, so RSVP soon. {all N.iI KI.iman at (212) 925-9820.

CITY LIMITS


7/32

ATEMPEST IN HARLEM into something more substantial," says Herman Velazquez,the BRISC's executive director.The center houses a specializedlibrary with information on writing business plans. "Our doorsare open," he says, "and we'retrying to develop credibility withthe community."

not a giveaway program ."Dorothy Pitman Hughes,the owner of Harlem OfficeSupply, also got turned downby the zone. She questions theinitiative's priorities, thoughshe concedes she's beenclearing up some tax problems that may have undermined her application . "My

Alvin Johnson, a Harlementrepreneur who opened aCapezio dance clothing storeabout a year ago, gets upsetevery time he re-reads therejection letter he got fromUpper Manhattan EmpowermentZone officials in October. Hehad spent thousands of dollarsrevamping his business planand preparing an application,he says, but his request for a$250,000 loan to turn a vacantbuilding into a dance studiowent nowhere.With its first 10 awardsannounced several weeksago, the government-funded$250 million EmpowermentZone backed high-profile projects involving Robert DeNiroand Walt Disney and somesmall nonprofits. but did notdirectly fund any local smallbusinesses . Some local merchants are angry."Don't tell us there's all thismoney and you're going toempower the community andthen have these people fromoutside the community comeand set up shop," saysJohnson.

He has helped reorganizethe 125th Street MerchantsAssociation in order to work ongetting small businessesaccess to zone funding.

"Someone's going to have to beheld accountable," he says.But zone officials say thecritics should cool their jets.Roy Swan, the zone 's chiefinvestment officer, points outthat Disney is just one of several prospective tenants inHarlem USA, a huge retail complex being built by a community- based firm .And he adds thatone of DeNiro's partners in therestoration of Minton's jazzclub is Melba Wilson, anAfrican-American music pro ducer connected with Sylvia's,the Harlem landmark restaurant. In addition, he says, oneaward went to a microenterprise program that will makeloans of up to $10,000.The zone has also set up atechnical assistance subsidiary, the Business Resourceand Investment Service Center(BRISC), at 271 West 125thStreet, to help small businesses. The BRISC, which is slatedto have a $500,000 investmentpool for this fiscal year, willmake loans worth $10,000 to$50,000 and help small businesses leverage bank funds.

"We're here to help them runtheir business in amore sophisticated way so a few years downthe road instead of just survivingthey can develop the business

But not every merchant

should expect help, heexplains . "The business community has to understand theprocess. If you cannot showthe ability to repay this loan ,even though we might want todo something, we can't. This is

biggest problem is I'm blackand female and I've been leftout of the economic main stream of America," she says."And the Empowerment Zonewas supposed to help me ."

Robin Epstein

BRIEFS

Dorothy PitmanHughes is seekingEmpowermentZone help toexpand her 125thStreet officesupply store.

KEEPING FAMILIES WHOLE and services for orphans asthey move to new homes. Thebill would also provide greaterassistance to low-income families who take custody of children at the request of a dyingparent.

"Are my kids going to be put outon the street?" She testifiedthat it is extremely important fora parent to have the power tochoose whom their childrenwill live with after they aregone-without having to worryabout financial and legal consequences.

Almost 30,(0) children havebeen orphaned by HIV/AIDS inNew York State-and that number is likely to more than double inthe next five years, according totestimony by Or. David Michaelsof CUNY Medical School givenat a public hearing held lastmonth by Brooklyn AssemblymanRoger Green, ManhattanAssemblyman Richard Gottfried,and City Council MemberStephen DiBrienza.

Resour(esSUFFERING FROM POST-WELFAREreform distress disorder?Want to do your part to (reate the

DECEMBER 1996

The hearing was part ofGreen's effort to move a billthrough the state legislatureaddressing the enormous problem of children orphaned byAIDS. The Families in TransitionAct would help children of terminally ill parents avoid fostercare by maintaining publicassistance benefits, improvinghome care services for ill parents and creating new mentoring and counseling programs

Almost 90 percent of all children whose parents die of thedisease are black or Latino, saidMichaels."My biggest fear is that Idon't want [my children) to fallback into foster care," saidRose Wilford, a mother of fiveliving with AIDS in Brooklyn.

The bill failed to pass theSenate last session. As yet ithas no sponsor in the upperhouse. We're just shopping fora senator; said Green'sspokesperson, Sania Metzger.Kristine Blomgren

jobs that (ash ess welfare recipientswill need after they're dumped off thedole? Okay, sport. Pony up ninepercent of your salary.In order to provide a mere 30,000

new living-wage jobs-withoutdisplacing anybody-all workers inNew York State would have to giveback nine percent of their salary,according to a recent report by the

Russell Sage Foundation.For a copy of "Workfare's Impact onthe New York Gty Labor Market,"(all (212) 750-6000.


8/32

s

PIPEliNE . ,

WEST leadersincludingBruceJames (left) andFather JohnDufell, march toWest Sidepolling sites al lelection night.

:M

The Ballot BrigadeA local organizing network is proving that Election Day can be a toolto put neighborhoods back on the political map. By Robin EpsteinV oter registration drives havebeen a popular backbone ofactivist community politicsfor years. But until now,voter turnout has nearlyalways been left to candidates' operationsand their supporters.

In an organizing experiment that culminated on Election Day, a network ofNew York City community organizationsshowed that mobilizing turnout among a

new constituency of voters is a potentiallypowerful way to draw attention to longignored neighborhoods.Eight New York City communitygroups, affiliates of the Industrial AreasFoundation (lAF), the nation's oldest community organizing network, got 23,000people in parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn,Queens and the Bronx to pledge theywould vote, according to David Reischer,who headed up the project. The groupshope to get 50,000 voters to the polls forthe mayoral election next year, he says.The experiments appear to have paidoff. One member group, East HarlemPartnership for Change, collected 7,000vote pledges from members , and WestSiders Together (WEST) pulled out about3,300. The groups used a legion of neighborhood residents to work as "captains,"ensuring that those who pledged to voteactually made it to the polls.For Altagracia Hiraldo, one ofWEST's 75 captains, that meant working

15 hours straight to hold 200 of her fellowparishioners to their promise to come outand pull the lever. The evening of ElectionDay, she had her hard work affinned byher pastor, an enthusiastic supporter ofWEST's voter mobilization. Celebratingmass at the Church of the Ascension onWest 107th Street, Father John Dufellexplained that the Catholic faith demandsmore than just attending weekly worship-it also means becoming involved inyour communities, working forsocial justice.Hiraldo-who emigratedfrom the Dominican RepublicIS years ago butonly recentlybecame a citizen-offers ablunter versionof her pastor'smessage: "Youhave to demonstrate your faiththrough action,not just pray,pray, pray. Youhave to dosomething for others, for poor people. Hesaid how important it is to vote, becausewe can change our society."

Firs t ForayThis was the local IAF affiliates' fIrstforay into electoral politics. Yet for years,the groups have been fostering communityleadership from among their member institutions, including churches , synagogues,block associations and other organizations.WEST, for example, has worked with localresidents on crime, education and transportation issues.The nonpartisan IAF does not plan toendorse candidates. Instead, leaders hopeto force politicians of all stripes to pay asmuch attention to low- and moderateincome neighborhoods as they do to thecity's affluent communities-which are,not coincidentally, known for high voterturnout rates. This way, IAF organizersreason, they can shape political agendasfrom the get-go.

"Obviously, if a neighborhood is heavily registered or has shown a recent spurtin voting activity, that would come to theattention of a candidate," says ManhattanBorough President Ruth Messinger, whohas all but declared her plans to run formayor. ''I'm sure they're going to be a factor," she adds. "I expect they will have animpact on who votes and on how they votein '97."The IAF affiliates (which also includeQueens Citizens Organization, SouthBronx Churches, Harlem InitiativesTogether, Brooklyn Interfaith for Actionand Central Brooklyn Churches) usedvarying approaches in this year's voterdrive, says Fleischer. In some cases, captains targeted people in their membercongregations and institutions. In others,he says, they opted for a geographicfocus, canvassing neighbors who live intheir housing projects or on their block. Instill others, captains talked to everyonethey knew.WEST captains began by workingtheir congregations, but a few weeksprior to Election Day they started goingdoor to door in their buildings as well,says lead organizer Vonda Brunsting."They could say, 'I know exactly whereyou can vote, because I vote in the sameplace,'" she explains. And they couldjudge their effectiveness by checkingturnout in districts where they had canvassed.In'Kllous EnthusiasmBessie Fontenez, a captain in EastHarlem, spent Election Day walkingback and forth between polling placesnear Lexington Avenue and I14th Street,where she was born 50 years ago and stilllives. She is just one example of IAF'splan to create a new roster of fIred-upleaders that will get out the vote yearafter year.Her two foster daughters in tow,Fontenez enthusiasm was infectious. Shedid not let a single individual pass by onthe street without giving them a friendlyreminder-in English, Spanish or both-to vote."Here come some more of my ladies,"she said as some neighbors approached.''I'm very happy."

CITY LIMITS


9/32

"Todar's battles cannot become fights of Blacks and other nonwhitesagainst whites. No one will win that fight."-Julian Bond

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/I Double Exposure delivers a double dose of smart writing, controlled anger, and devastat-ing common sense./1 -Barbara Ehrenreich, author ofWorst Years of Our Lives

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1996


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s

PIPEliNE ,

Yves Vilus . thedirector of heErasmusNeighborhoodFederation. sayshe has to doless tenantorganizing inorder to take thecity's check.

g

Enemies, a Housing StoryThe city is paying tenant organizers to cozy up to their swornadversaries-landlords. By Glenn ThrushOer a year ago , BarbaraSchliff received notice thecity was once again givingher ~ i l l i a m s b ~ r g - ? a s e d community orgamzatlOn acontract to continue the tenant supportwork it had been doing for years.When it came time to me a project mission statement with the city's DepartmentofHousing Preservation and Development(HPD), she jotted down a list of some ofthe goals Los Sures has long pursued:organize tenants, try to keep landlordsfrom neglecting or abandoning neighborhood buildings and help residents fightunresponsive owners in Housing Court.But Schliff was in for a surprise."We were called into a meeting withour coordinator at HPD and he told us the

money wasn 't for tenant organizing," saysSchliff. "Basically, he said organizing wasfrivolous, unnecessary and a waste oftime ... Instead , they wanted us to helplandlords get loans."For the first time in more than adecade, Los Sures was unable to agree tothe city's demands on the project, andSchliff lost the contract.Los Sures and other community organizations that have long held small contracts with HPD are finding that stringsattached to their city checks are yankingthem away from tenant organizing-andinto the relatively uncharted territory ofneighborhood-based landlord assistance .HPD's new Neighborhood PreservationConsultant program pays 54 communitybased nonprofits to be the agency's eyesand ears in low-income neighborhoods.But as the NPC contractors are beginning a biennial renewal process, many areclaiming the program is poorly run andfoggily conceived-and forces them toperform functions the agency 's centralstaff should be doing itself."How appropriate is it for HPD to beasking us to help landlords?" Schliff asks."Especially when you go into buildingsand see that so many low-income tenantsaren't getting any services and so manyapartments need repairs."Speaking before a recent hearing of theCity Council Housing and BuildingsCommittee , HPD Commissioner LilliamBarrios-Paoli pledged to fine-tune the program, but expressed no desire to change theagency's path. "[The problem is that] somegroups are not comfortable expanding theirroles from tenant organizing," she said.Landlords at RiskFormer Housing CommissionerDeborah Wright created the NPC programin early 1995 . Even tenant advocates concede that its predecessor and current sisterprogram, the Community ConsultantProgram, has been poorly monitored andthat some of the contracts went to neighborhood groups closely allied with localpoliticians ."Both of these programs are seriouslyflawed in the way they are administered andimplemented," says Anne Pasmanick of theCommunity Training and Resource Center,

which has worked with CommunityConsultant groups for several years.At the time, Wright told City Councilmembers she wanted community groupsto refocus on the initiatives HPD itself hadbegun to promote: primarily, providinggreater help to landlords at risk of foreclosure.Wright's redesign gave each groupslightly more money ($45,000 each a year)but demanded they fulfill aDumpster-loadof new functions. These included 25 specific, labor-intensive tasks, such as developing a "comprehensive neighborhoodneeds assessment," gathering data andconducting surveys about housing in theircommunities, publicizing and helpinglandlords apply for subsidized repairloans, assisting the agency with codeenforcement and landlord counseling ,mediating landlord-tenant disputes anddrafting so-called "voluntary repair agreements" with owners seeking to clear theirrecord of HPD violations .HPD administrators were not subtleabout the shift: they established rigorousquotas for landlord assistance measures andplaced them at the top of the self-evaluationsheet distributed to each group. Tenantorganizing criteria dropped to the bottom."We used to spend a lot of time goingwith tenants into Housing Court, but that 'sin the past now," says Yves Vilus, directorof the Erasmus Neighborhood Federation ,a nonprofit that serves the predominantlyCaribbean community in F1atbush. "Theother thing we used to do a lot of is tenantorganizing. Now we don 't do that verymuch anymore."The NPC contract, along with anothersmall HPD contract, make up $68,000 ofErasmus ' $200,000 budget, so Vilus has nochoice but to conform . ''If I lose the moneyI'm out of business ," he concedes. He sayshe supports the idea of providing assistanceto good landlords, but the new tasks dominate his time and have put him in a difficulposition with some tenants he works with.After attending a recent building meeting,Vilus and the landlord remained behind afew minutes for a private talk. "When Ilooked outside, I noticed that all the tenantswere standing out there trying to make sureI wasn't cutting a deal behind their backs,"he recalls. "For me it was kind of sad. Most

CITY LIMITS


11/32

of the landlords don't trust us and a lot of thetenants are starting to feel like we'vebetrayed them."Not Much HelpIt's not just a question of reorientingtheir missions; some community groupdirectors are also concerned the agency isnot backing them up.''The groups have been spending a lotof time trying to contact landlords, butthey ' re not getting much help from HPDwhen they do get in touch with a landlord," says Celia Irvine, an attorney withthe Association for NeighborhoodHousing and Development, a citywidegroup that has organized a coalition ofNPCs. In response to the coalition's criticism, HPD has held two recent trainingsessions on the city's repair loan programand on how to execute voluntary repairagreements with landlords, Irvine says.The repair agreements are supposed tobe a nonconfrontational tool for gettinglandlords to repair chronic buildingdefects. Yet, while many owners have beenwilling to negotiate to facilitate repairs andclear their records of violations, the NPCgroups don't have any leverage fromHPD- in the form of [Illes or penalties -to force landlords to stick to the deals.

"Basically, the only thing we can offerthem is a waiver of HPD's $300 inspeftionfee in exchange for making the repairs ,"says the director of another Brooklyn NPCgroup. ''That's our only carrot. If the landlord doesn't want to cooperate, what arewe supposed to do?Tell their mommy?"Even when an NPC manages to hashout a deal with a landlord, some say citystaffers drag their feet processing paperwork and dispatching building inspectorsto issue an all-clear on a landlord's slate ofviolations.One of Vii us ' landlords filed his voluntary repair agreements with HPD threemonths ago. He is still waiting for aninspector to drop by. "We are processinginspections as soon as we get the information," counters Cassandra Vernon, an HPDspokesperson.There are other frustrations. As part ofthe contract, groups were required to submit comprehensive reports assessing thestate of their community's housing stockand proposing various developmentefforts. So far none have received anyresponse to their hard-wrought plans.Such delays are exposing flaws in anDECEMBER 1996

agency that some advocates feel is becoming less and less effective at preservingcity housing. Since 1986, the number ofHPD building inspectors has been slashedfrom more than 600 to less than 200. Andin recent months, the massive departure ofkey staff members--capped off by a 93-

person early-retirement exodus early lastmonth-has gutted the 100 Gold Streetheadquarters of experienced housingexperts.''It's a total brain-drain," laments oneHPD source. ''It's hard to find somebodywith real housing expertise around here."

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PIPEliNE. ,

Reverend AlSharpton has builtaformidable grass-roots powerbase byprotesting issueslike police brutality,which many otherblack politicianshave ignored.

e-

Blunting Sharpton?Mainstream African American political leaders are in a bindif he Reverend Al runs. By Ron Howell

spoiler who will diminish the chances ofliberals with broader-based appeal-andbetter prospects of defeating RepublicanMayor Rudolph Giuliani. Moreover some ~ \ ! . ! elements of the black community

L ike the beam of light thatturned St. Paul into aChristian, last year's MillionMan March made sudden converts, too.At Harlem's Abyssinian BaptistChurch, the day before the march ,Congressman Charles Rangel asserted inno uncertain terrns that he would neithershow up nor speak at the event. The marchwas being organized by Louis Farrakhan,the controversial black Muslim leader whoin past speeches had baited Jews and oncemade a death threat against Rangel'sfriend , David Dinkins.But the next morning came the stunning numbers. Hundreds of thousands ofblack men converged on Washington fromthe comers of the nation. A light blazedfrom above. And Rangel spoke."When I saw Charlie Rangel [on theplatform] I almost dropped dead," says

Jacques Degraff, who was at the marchand had been at Abyssinian Church theday before. Today, Degraff is directing thesoon-to-be-declared mayoral campaign ofthe Reverend AI Sharpton , and he is hoping to convert mainstream black politicians to his man 's cause.In fact, Degraff, a former official withthe state Urban Development Corporationand current vice-president of 100 BlackMen, an influential businessmen 's group ,sounds a prophesy of doom for those whoignore Sharpton's candidacy. "Some political figures may no longer be holding theirpositions when this is over," he says.Solid SupportConvincing a broad spectrum of AfricanAmerican political leaders to supportSharpton will not be easy. For many,Sharpton carries as much baggage asFarrakhan does. He is widely viewed as a

remain concerned about aspects ofSharpton's past, notably allegations he collaborated with federalagents in hunting down black fugi-tive radicals in the early 1980s.One thing, however, is alreadyclear. Sharpton, who has shownstartling popularity among blackvoters citywide, is going to causeproblems for the likely field ofDemocratic candidates, includingborough presidents FernandoFerrer and Ruth Messinger,Comptroller Alan Hevesi and CityCouncil Member Sal Albanese .Speaking off the record, a significant number of top black electedofficials say they are leaningtoward Hevesi or Messinger. ButSharpton'S challenge-and theirconstituents' response to i t-could make that problematic.A recent Marist poll showsSharpton getting 20.5 percent ofthe vote in a one-on-one againstGiuliani, less than the otherDemocratic possibles, includingMessinger, Ferrer, Hevesi andAlbanese . But the true significance of the figure is that it represents solid support among themass of black voters, a crucialbloc for Democrats at the citywide level.A spoiler he may be, but he's an effective one.In 1992, Sharpton received an impressive two-thirds of the African Americanvote in a four-way Senate primary contestwith Geraldine Ferraro ,Liz Holtzman andBob Abrams, the last of whom went on tolose to Republican incumbent AIfonseD' Amato. Two years later, Sharpton wonroughly 80 percent of the black ballotscast when he took on Senate Democraticincumbent Patrick Moynihan. In bothinstances, Sharpton surprised analysts byscoring respectable double-digit figures infinal tallies.What's more, with his fire-and-brimstone preaching style and his flair formedia attention, the minister seems tohave special appeal among the most alienated blacks-those who are eligible tovote but have not yet registered .

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Sharpton claims he can put 100,000new black names on the election rolls bythe end of January. This may sound likeReverend Al hyperbole, but Farrakhan wasalso accused of exaggerating when heannounced plans to assemble one millionblack men.Add to all this the fact that Sharptonhas been organizing feverishly and hasbuilt strong linkages in the city 's blackneighborhoods . He has a horne in theBedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn(in addition to one in New Jersey) and herecently moved his National ActionNetwork offices to Harlem from Brooklyn.The network holds regular meetings andbuys an hour every weekend on WWRLAM radio, owned by Unity Broadcasting,and its sessions are held at Harlem'sCanaan Baptist Church, whose pastor, theRev. Wyatt T. Walker, is one of the nation 'smost respected clergymen.THmH with SharptonWalker, once a top aide to the Rev. Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr., is a staunchSharpton ally. Sharpton has also drawn thesupport of some of the most effective community organizers in the city, like CharlesBarron, who says he plans to run on aSharpton ticket and mount an insurgencycampaign against City Council MemberPriscilla Wooten. And so, unless someonelike State Comptroller Carl McCall sud-denly throws his hat in the ring, givingthem a black candidate who is "credible,"black politicians are in a bind.Observers are wondering, will blackpoliticians swallow their concerns and backthe reverend with the James Brown hair-do?There's a possibility that some blackleaders will split their support, publiclyendorsing a mainstream candidate but privately allowing their streetworkers to cam-paign for Sharpton. This happened in the1992 Senate race when a number of localpols endorsed Elizabeth Holtzman butthen on Election Day, fearing the wrath oftheir constituents, passed out palm cardssaying they were teamed with Sharpton.''This was pretty broadly done," says oneknowledgeable black political analyst.Sharpton'S critics give good reasons foravoiding the man. Acommon complaint isthat Sharpton is a grandstander, unwillingto run for anything he can really win, likea City Councilor state legislative seat."Sharpton has become the victim of hisown hype," says Chris Owens, presidentDECEMBER 1996

of Community School Board 13 in the FortGreene section of Brooklyn and son ofCongressman Major Owens.Moreover, many black officials stillview Sharpton as a loose cannon with anunpredictable trajectory. Alive in theirmemory is the Tawana Brawley imbroglio,in which Sharpton made allegations, neverproven, that the young black woman fromWappingers Falls had been raped by whitelaw enforcement officers.And he is no more popular with manyblack radicals. Some grassroots activistssuch as Brooklyn's Sonny Carson still harbor suspicions that Sharpton fingered oneof their own. In the early 1980s, Sharptonallegedly cooperated with the FBI in an

effort to capture Assata Shakur (formerlyJoanne Chesimard), a fugitive black revolutionary convicted of killing a New Jerseystate trooper. The minister has vigorouslydenied these charges but they have stuck."One of the things we do not believe in aresnitches or anybody ever aligned with thepolice in any way," Carson says. "It isn 'teasy for the grassroots community to forgive anybody that's been identified as aninformant."Sharpton does enjoy good workingrelations with several black elected officials , including Harlem AssemblymanKeith Wright and Queens AssemblymanGreg Meeks. Still he does not generallyseek counsel from establishment leadersand, in this case, seems to have openlyblindsided them. The statewide Council ofBlack Elected Democrats met shortly afterSharpton declared his intentions inSeptember. His announcement was newsto everyone there. "Sharpton had not discussed this with any of the elected officialsor religious leaders who were at that meeting," Harlem Councilmember C. VirginiaFields observed. The group has not yettaken an official position on his candidacy.Other black political groups like theBrooklyn-based Coalition for CommunityEmpowerment are talking about Sharpton,but one source says the group is unlikely toendorse him. A one-and-a-half-year-oldorganization of black activists called theCommittee to Elect the Next Black Mayorof the City of New York will wait awhilebefore taking an official position. ButLuther Blake, one of the group 's founders,says "Sharpton might well be the person."Most of the city's powerful blackpoliticians are hedging. Rangel , for example, praises Sharpton for his consistency

on issues like police brutality and his ability to "manipulate the media." But he goeson to say, ''The fact that he got out thereearly and announced doesn't mean a damnthing to me."Others are almost implacably skeptical.Says Brooklyn Democratic CongressmanMajor Owens, a longtime Sharpton foe:"There are a lot of things about his pastthat have to be explained and cleared up."Whatever I. NecearyDespite the criticism, Sharpton hasbeen cultivating a more subdued image.He maintains that the last thing he wants todo is help usher Republican MayorGiuliani to a second term by serving as aDemocratic spoiler. "I have had a long andhostile history of dealings with Mr.Giuliani, so I would do whatever would benecessary to remove him," he says.He argues he should be supported byAfrican Americans because no one else istalking forthrightly about issues such aspolice brutality and deficiencies in thepublic schools. He says he is virtuallyalone in challenging the city 's currentpolitical structure, in which few blackshold citywide or even borough-wide elective office. Only Bronx District AttorneyRobert Johnson is black.

''If nothing else, my entering the racewill expose this," Sharpton says. "It is totally unbelievable that out of nineteen citywideand borough-wide office holders, we haveonly one who is black. Who made the dealthat we would be that underrepresented?"And at the end there might, in fact, bemany established black leaders who takethe position summed up by retired StateSupreme Court Justice Bruce M. Wright.In 1979, Wright ran one of the most successful local black campaigns since thedays of the late Adam Clayton Powell. Hewon a judgeship by an impressive margin,despite vigorous opposition from MayorEd Koch and the powerful Patrolmen'sBenevolent Association."I don't think [Sharpton] has achance," Wright says. "But I don't think,as other people do, that voting for him is awasted vote ... It enhances black people ifthey support him in great numbers .... Itputs up a show of black power, and that isnever a waste." .Ron Howell, a ormer reporter forNew York Newsday, teaches writingat Medgar Evers College.

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ust beyond the faded fun houses of Coney Island'sSurf Avenue, but not quite past the bad memories,live Aaron Phillips, his wife Cathy, the kids andtheir dolls.As the Phillips family goes to sleep in their apartment in the Coney Island Houses project, a Barbiearmy (Back-to-School Barbie, Polynesian Barbie

and about 100 more) perches pop-eyed on the living room shelves, symbols of the vigilance the family needs in orderto thrive in a neighborhood beset with drugs, crime and joblessness.Until recently, the Phillips family had to live with their eyesperpetually open, too. But for the moment at least, things havechanged. Three years ago they would have laughed at you foreven suggesting they let their teenage daughters Aja and Desirawalk alone outside at night. Forget about letting them taking thenight classes they said they needed to graduate early from highschool early and get into a good college . Yet this year, Cathy andAaron gave the go-ahead: an after-dark ride on the bus into ConeyIsland was no longer an insane risk."I don 't care much for Giuliani, but he did a remarkable job

getting the hooligans out," says Aaron Phillips. A moment later,however, his outlook darkens. For all the improvements, he says ,a few gunshots and a couple of bad days and the newfound peacein the projects will quickly disappear.In fact, the bad old days are never far from the surface of anyconversation about Coney Island's future.Over the last two years, the dense cluster of massive publichousing projects that protrude from the narrow Coney Island peninsula have suddenly become livable places. But tenants fear that thisprogress, like much of the improvements in public housing in NewYork City in the past few years, is tenuous, fragile and reversible.What's going on in Coney Island is a microcosm for what'shappening in housing projects across the city. For the first timesince poor city management, the explosive crack epidemic andnagging poverty made many of the city's 181,800 units of publichousing virtually uninhabitable during the 1980s, the projects areon a dramatic upward swing. Moreover, Giuliani has institutedsome of the most significant changes in security and tenantscreening since most of the huge towers were planted in poorneighborhoods a quarter century ago .

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But every piece of good news is linked to some gnawinguncertainty. No one denies there has been a sharp reduction in violent crime, but in some parts of even the good projects, drugbazaars still proliferate and the sound of gunfue is commonenough. And tenant leaders are now saying police brass isn'tdoing enough to assure that recent increases in the size of theNYPD's housing bureau-buoyed by a one-time infusion of federal cash-are sustained over time.You won 't get an argument in the courtyard of most buildingsif you praise the city 's renewal of rigorous screening proceduresto weed out criminals and people chronically late on their rent.But tenant leaders say the New York City Housing Authority(NYCHA) hasn't made any effort to fulfill promises to allow realtenant input on admissions. And many housing experts say the keyto long-term stability of low-income housing is to cede somemeaningful control to tenants.At the core of all these changes is the city 's controversial philosophy that the long-term improvement of the projects depends onbringing more affluent tenants back to public housing. Not coincidentally, such a policy shift would also boost rent income for theHousing Authority at a time when the federal govemment has beenslashing public housing operating subsidies. In the process, they are

reversing previous administrations ' policy of using NYCHA tohouse the city's poorest residents. The Giuliani administration hasapplied to the federal government for the right to push wage-earners to the head of the quarter-million-name NYCHA waiting list, aplan currently bogged down in the courts.Still, most tenants sense that big changes are coming. Whetherthe changes will keep the nightmare days from coming back,that's the question."At the moment, I like the neighborhood," says Aaron, aTransit Authority dispatcher with 25 years on the job, who plansto move to Florida when he retires in the next few years. "But whoknows bow long it will last?"

oney Island 's population is overwhelminglyblack, but there were few African-Americansthere before the mid-I950s when the fust developments, the Gravesend and Coney Island projects, opened to the neighborhood's white working class. At that time, most other housing in theneighborhood, with the exception of a scatteringof small apartment buildings, were disintegrating summer bungalows converted for year-round use by EasternEuropean Jews who colonized shorefro nt Brooklyn.When 6-year-old Ronald Stewart moved into Coney in themid- '50s, he was one of the few black people in the neighborhood. "My mother used to do housework for the white people, theJewish people who owned houses along Ocean Parkway," recallsStewart, who is today the fust-ever black member of the ConeyIslandlBrighton Beach school board. "We moved into a smallapartment in a rooming house .... I'm talking about no bathtub, nohot water, no steam heat. Just a pot-bellied stove. There were ratsand cold nights."In the early '60s, the Jews and Italians that hadn't alreadyabandoned the neighborhood for the suburbs began moving intothree huge, state-subsidized, middle-income high-rise complexes-Warbasse, Trump Village and Luna Park. The Stewart family 's home was razed by Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump,whose management company promised the family fust crack at anew apartment.But like many other blacks who tried to apply, Stewart's mother found her way barred by de facto racism based on her low

income. "The rents, even the subsidized rents, were too expensiveDECEMBER 1996

for us," says Stewart, a parole officer who also runs ConeyIsland 's only bookstore. "It was a way of keeping us out. Andthat's why Trump and Warbasse are almost all white." TheStewart family took several hundred dollars and moved into oneof the cheap bungalows on the West End, where most of the public housing projects currently stand.Thousands of other black families, forced from other parts ofthe city by rising rents and gentrification, followed suit. By thelate '60s almost half of the neighborhood's residents lived belowthe poverty line. But within a few years, landlords began neglecting repairs or fled their responsibilities altogether, allowing theirbuildings to rot.Soon, Stewart's mother and other neighborhood activistsbegan agitating for better housing . The administration of MayorJohn Lindsay pooled its federal money and between 1968 and1974 dozens of small buildings were razed and an architecturallyjumbled polyglot of residential towers rose, offering clean, modem apartments to more than 3,500 families in a host of new developments, including Carey Gardens, O'Dwyer Gardens, SurfsideGardens and three major additions to Coney Island Houses .But the seeds for failure were sown along with the shrubs andshade trees that sprung from the courtyards between the highrises. First, the largely poor public housing tenants had been segregated from middle-class whites tucked away in their own apartment towers a half mile away. More importantly, there were fewjobs and fewer social services in the neighborhood. And even inthose early years, the majority of families were receiving someform of public assistance.Yet the apartments , some of them spacious duplexes withocean views, were a welcome haven for people who had beendoubled up in back street wood-frame shacks."When we moved in, to us it was a paradise," recalls AudreyRoss, whose family was one of the fust to move into CareyGardens in 1971. "My mother wasn't working, she had six children and soon we took in some of my aunt's children, 12 in all.But we had never lived in any place so nice. I'll never forget theday we moved in."

n a crisp fall day 25 years later, the seasidesky above Carey Gardens' four I8-storybuildings retains its cheery, bluest-eye hue .But inside Unity Tower, one of the dunbrick piles in Carey, you can slip through anunlocked back door or walk around front towatch the kids garnbling in front of the maindoor. Two men glug at their soggy-baggedColt-45's in broad daylight on the steps.The lobby is littered with cigarette butts, crushed Coke cans andballed -up gum wrappers. The elevators smell like urine and theglass window inside the grim metal lift has been scratched into acataracted, opaque blur. The stairwells are dim and echo with themetallic-sounding shouts of mothers yelling at their children."Drugs, prostitution, you name it, we got it," says ThelmaTucker, who only feels safe in her six-and-a-half room duplexhigh above Surf Avenue.Debra Collins moved in last summer from the quiescentSheepshead Bay projects so she could get a larger apartment, butshe wants out already. "I'm not used to living around unclean people," she says. "I worry about my two kids riding the elevators bythemselves."Her concern is justified. This building alone had four feloniousassaults in the year ending last June, more than either the Gravesendor Surfside projects, which house four times as many people. InConey Island's new housing police station, located just across


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Crime ratesat CareyGardens havedeclinedrecently. buttenants saythe number ofcops on thebeat is alsostarting toslide.

Mermaid Avenue from Unity, the thumb-tack flags jammed intostrategic maps show that crack, vice and robbery hot-spots clusteraround Carey more densely than any other Coney Island development. People living in the three other Carey buildings endured 25robberies, burglaries and felonious assaults last year.On this particular November day, two housing patrolmen standin front of Carey Gardens, a little more winded than worried. Theyhave just chased a suspected drug dealer up five flights of stairs."We lost him," says the taIler cop, still panting. 'There are threestairwells in this thing. There are thousands of apartments. A lotof doors that get slammed shut behind someone. There are one ortwo of us. People can just disappear if they want to."

Yet even here, the citywide reduction in violent and drug-related crime has been dramatic. Although, housing bureau officialscould not provide specific year-to-year numbers for CareyGardens , the major crime index-which includes homicide, robbery and rape-has declined by 12 percent in PSAI , which covers the project, according to Joseph Leake, the new chief of theNYPD's housing bureau ."It used to be like the Wild West," says Norma Scipio. leaderof the Carey Gardens tenants ' council. "I f someone shoots a gunout here, you really hear it because it echoes.... But you don't hearnearly as much of that anymore. There's still drugs, but there area lot fewer guns.""It has cooled down a lot," agrees Hasan Abusabe, a 23-year

old clerk at the Surf Avenue deli across from Carey. "A few yearsago, I remember there was this guy who shot at these kids becausethey had squirted his car with a water gun. He hit a little girl in theside. One time I remember some guy who was just walking alongthe street out here with a shotgun, caIrn, just shooting."Police brass credit the "zero tolerance" policing strategy offormer Police Commissioner William Bratton, which emphasizesquality-of-life arrests for public drinking and other minor offenses. But they also laud the i8-month-old merger of the once-independent housing police force into the NYPD chain of command,which made housing commanders accountable for crime numbersin a grueling put-up-or-shut-up process instituted by Bratton."Now we have to go down to One Police Plaza and defendourselves at these big meetings in front of the top brass," says

PSAI commander Capt. Charles Rubin. "We 're subjected to thesame standard as other cops."But most importantly, the housing police force grew by 373,to 2,079 in October 1995, largely the result of an infusion of federal anti-drug money. "It's allowed us to get more officers out ofpatrol cars and onto the beat," Leake says. "In housing, the keyis to have as many cops on foot as you can , walking up and downthe stairway s."

But the number of housing cops dropped steeply this year whensome of the federal money ran out. Today the force stands at about1,880. And the stream of new cops joining the housing division isdiminishing. Before the merger, one in every to recruits attendingthe police academy was assigned to the Housing Police.This year,according to statistics compiled by the City Council, only one out .of every 17 cadets will go into the housing division.And if crime in projects around the city is decreasing, it isfalling at a far slower rate than offenses outside ofNYCHA developments. Overall crime rates in projects dropped by 6.5 percentlast year, compared with a nearly 15 percent drop citywide,according to NYPD statistics."I don't think Bratton's promise that the merger would reducecrime in the projects to levels comparable with crime outside themhas come true," says City Council Member Anthony Weiner, whochairs the public housing safety subcommittee.NYPD officials argue the full benefits of the merger have notyet been realized. And out in Coney Island, many residents saythat despite the reduction in crime, there still aren't nearly enoughcops on the beat."It seems like the police come in here when they feel like it,"says Merrill Davis , president of the Surfside Gardens tenant association , who says there were two shootings in his building in earlyNovember. "We have a drug problem here that's still horrendous.""Right now the cops run from site to site, to wherever there's

\


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the greatest problem," says Norma Scipio of Carey Gardens."That's not bad , but it pulls cops off of other sites and the criminals notice that and move to where the cops aren't."Captain Rubin is reluctant to talk about specific deploymentpatterns, but he confmns that, in most cases, only one cop is onpost conducting roof-to-basement "vertical patrols" in any givenConey Island project on any given shift. That's roughly the samepatrol strength as before the merger, he adds.

ut good police work alone is not going tosolve the problems of Carey Gardens.Conditions in many housing projects deteriorated badly during the 1980s. And while thereis debate over the causes, most public housing experts agree the problems were merely aconcentrated reflection of urban America'seconomic meltdown. More poor peoplemoved into public housing because the private-market, lowincome housing stock had deteriorated badly. Federal programsfor the poor were slashed. Communities hemorrhaged jobs. Gunsproliferated and the violent crack trade exploded.''There was a greater need for housing among the welfare population," says Phil Thompson, a former high-ranking NYCHAadministrator who now teaches at Barnard College. "The onlylarge stock of available apartments was in buildings that had beenso poorly managed by the Housing Authority that good tenantscouldn't stand living in them."All of this, at a time when the Housing Authority had givenup promoting a sense of ownership among tenants.Although statistics are hard to find, experts say the percentage ofvery poor, unemployed families in New York's public housingincreased dramatically, and the already troubled buildings bore thebrunt of the change. "Bad buildings became so concentrated with

very poor troubled tenants, they became totally destabilized," saysPeter Marcuse, an urban planning professor at Columbia University.Carey Gardens was one of those places . "It was the worst-keptproject [in Coney Island)," says Audrey Ross. "I had a hole in mywall for three years and one of my toilets was out for twomonths.... Anyone who had an alternative would have left."The current administration has dusted Off NYCHA's longneglected tenant screening process, which was relaxed to the point ofnonexistence during the '80s. Now, each prospective tenant faces abattery of hurdles, including personal interviews, checks with previous landlords or neighbors and adetailed job history questionnaire.The housing authority is also running criminal checks onprospective tenants, rejecting applicants with criminal historiesand excluding the close relatives of tenants whose husbands orsons have been convicted of drug-dealing. "We're not looking torule out people who had one arrest 15 years ago," says NYCHAspokeswoman Ruth Colon. "We're trying to screen out peoplewith bad recent rap sheets."Months before the Clinton administration announced its ownintention to adopt a policy of evicting convicted criminals frompublic housing, NYCHA Chairman Ruben Franco had alreadygained approval for his own "one-strike" eviction plan. And as aresult of an April court decision, exiction appeals that had normally taken up to two years are now getting settled within 90 days.NYCHA has given the boot to the families or friends of accused

felons if they refuse to bar the offender from their apartment. In theyear ending last June, about 1,500 families have been evictedunder the process, according to authority spokesman Hilly Gross.Yet for all these changes, tenants argue the administration has backedoff its central promise: to include residents in the screening process."A couple of years ago I attended a ribbon-cutting to open aroom in my building that was going to house the tenant screeningcommittee," says Rosia Wyche, the Coney Island Houses tenantleader. "It's still sitting there. We're not involved at all.""Giving tenants a real say in how their buildings are administered plays a big part in how well the building runs long-term,"says Susan Saegert, director of CUNY's Housing EnvironmentsResearch Group. She has also researched tenant involvement inEast Harlem's public developments. "I t gives people a sense of


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Cathy Phillips.her husbandAaron andtheir childrenfinally feelsafe living inConey IslandHouses.

real control over their lives and a sense of ownership."At Carey Gardens, the authority has introduced a limited version of tenant screening committees, but members of the panel saythey have little real power."Most of the ones that we screen are pretty decent people. It's theones we don't see I worry about because we don't get to screeneverybody," says Norma Scipio, who sits on the II-member committee. "We don't have much real power, but I think we help the pe0-ple who are coming into the building feel more comfortable, feel likethey know somebody. We're sort of like a welcoming committee."II these changes are only small pieces of theauthority's grand strategy to stabilize projectsand increase revenues by bringing moreworking families into developments likeCarey Gardens. In 1995, Franco applied toHUD for a waiver to allow the authority togive at least half of t'"le 6,000 to 8,000 apartments that become vacant each year to wageearning families making as much as $40,000.NYCHA received approval of the waiver in June , but the policy is being challenged in federal court by the Legal Aid Society,which argues the policy will grant preferences to white applicantsat the expense of blacks and Latinos."They are trying to change the fundamental purpose of publichousing in the city," says Scott Rosenberg, Legal Aid's litigationdirector. ''They are saying that we will give priority to the leastneedy at the expense of the people who most need permanentshelter." Rosenberg points to an analysis done by thePhiladelphia-based Center for Forensic Economics, which showsthe new criteria would slash the number of very poor applicantsadmitted to public housing by half, while bringing working-classnewcomers up to about 20 percent of the intake pool.The lawsuit is due to be heard this month, but Colon says it hashalted implementation of NYCHA's plan.

Such "income mixing" is nothing new, however. For years,NYCHA's three-tiered income formula for admission to projectshas differentiated between middle-income families, working families earning less than $25,000 a year, and families subsistingentirely on public assistance. The formula, never vigorouslyapplied by previous administrations, allows NYCHA to take athird of all new residents from each income group.

In recent years, the poorest applicants have made up about 75percent of new tenants. In the meantime, NYCHA has been ableto attract only a handful of the most affluent applicants: 6.4 percent of all those who applied for apartments in 1995, according toauthority statistics.Franco has been working aggressively to boost that number.Two years ago, NYCHA released a bid solicitation to advertisingflfffis to design a public relations campaign to help "overcomefears, misunderstandings and other obstacles that inhibit workingfamilies from considering public housing as a viable alternative."The awarding of this multimillion dollar contract, too, is contingent on the outcome of the Legal Aid lawsuit, authority officialssay.Norma Scipio and other members of the Carey screening committee say they are seeing far more applicants who receive SSIdisability payments, an income level that the federal governmentclassifies as "working class." And housing cops teU stories ofNYCHA agents escorting neatly dressed people through the hallways of the projects. "Carey's big selling point is that it's rightacross from the precinct," one officer said.

In addition, Giuliani and Franco are supporting efforts byRepublicans in the House of Representatives to repeal the 1937federal housing act, which caps rent levels for poor tenants andlimits the number of middle-income tenants that housing authorities can admit in any given year."We need [working class] families to restore stability to ourdevelopments," Franco wrote in a letter to GOP CongressmenRick Lazio of Long Island last summer. "In a period of decreasedgovernmental assistance, we need the dollars they bring from theirearnings."ven as things appear to be getting better, thepublic housing system is being pulledbetween two warring visions: one as housingof last resort for poor families, the other ascommunities buoyed by residents withmoney in their pockets and middle-class aspirations. If Coney Island is any indication, thelatter vision is on the ascent.Perhaps the most visible embodiment of change can be seenwalking along the boardwalk on the West End in small groups,arms linked. It is the return of white people to the neighborhood'spublic housing.Russian immigrants, many of them forced out of the escalatingprivate real estate market in nearby Brighton Beach, have beenmoving into projects here in a small but steady trickle."It's sort of strange, after all these years, to see white faces."says Aaron Phillips. "Maybe we're going to have to start gettingused to the inevitability of a new problem."He half-laughs."Gentrification."

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candalSecret rrosecution doc ts Jiorfi a year-old briberyscanda reveal the widespreaa potential for corruptionand manipulation in the city's four Housing Courts.Reform is still a long way away. By Matthew Goldsteintate court administrators reappointed Queens Housing Judge Emanuel Haber five years ago to his thirdterm on New York City's Housin Court, despite allegations that the judge had a history of verbally abusing and mistreating tenants. The deCi ion was controversial, but court officials said the evidence againstaber was inconclusive.when the 76-year-old judge again sought rea pointment this year to a new five-year term, he foundthe tide hacl.turned against him. .This time, e..Housing Court Advisory Council-a 14-member board that assists court administratorsin reviewing the qua ifications ofNew York City's 35 housing judges-opposed his reap-pointment. So did the prestigious Association of the Bar 0 the City of New York.Tenant advocates had convinced the.. 0 organizations with a mountain of evidencedocumenting Haber's persistent rude an confrontational demeano towards tenantswho appear in his court pro se, or without att(lmeys.Haber realized his bid for a fourth term was in serious jeopardy and embarkedon an all out campaign, enlisting other judges and the landlords' bar to save his$95,OOO-a-year job .Privately, however, court admim trators were sending Haber astrong signal that they were not inclined to return . to the bench. And in October,Haber announced he was retiring. In the end, Haber's experience was similar to that ofveteran Housing Judge Jack Dubinsky, who had also (lome under fire for his allegedmistreatment of unrepresented tenants. Dubinsky also chose to retire rather than beforced out by court administrators.Haber and Dubinsky's failure to win reappointme to new s this year can beattributed to a turnabout in the Housing Court judicial appointment process. Where oncethe reappointment of an incumbent housingjudge w almost a oregone conclusion, courtadministrators now appear committed to installing higher-caliber judges on the city's fourHousing Courts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx. To a large measure, thechange is the result of the arrest two years ago of fI rManhattan Housing Judge Arthur R.Scott, If. for taking bribes to fix landloro-tenant cases. Scott's arrest and his February 20, 1996,guilty plea f.Ocked.the.city' ousing Court },stem and served as awake-up call to court admin-istrators about festering problems' eof the state's most neglected and beleaguered couJ"!S .

.h e been aseries--o stuttering reform efforts in Housing Court in the months sinceScott's plea. In some small ways, such as the retirements of Haber and Dubinsky, the reformshave begun to show results. The appointments process is changing and some judges arebeing held more accountable for their actions. And the long-static advisory board, responsible for many aspects of Housing Court oversight, is being thoroughly reconfigured."What we're trying to do is put procedures in place that, at least, make sure aScott situation never happens again," says Acting Supreme Court Justice Joan B. Carey, whopresided over the grand jury phase of the Scott investigation before becoming the city'sdeputy administrative judge earlier this year.But Carey's reforms have only just begun to reduce the potential for corruption andmalfeasance in Housing Court. Several troubling aspects of the system, many of whichwere revealed as gateways for corruption during the Scott case, remain entirely unaddressed .Secret court documents from the Scott bribery investigation, obtained by this reporter andmade public here for the first time, clearly reveal the brazen nature in which this rogue judge operfa ted. They also show just how blind court administrators have been to the possibility of wrongci3 doing, and they outline how the troubled court system left the judge and some landlords plenty of1 room to maneuver for illicit gains. Many of these opportunities remain in place today.Attorneys,_ for example, are still able to easily manipulate the choice of a judge on any specific case. And a

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new administrative body established two years ago to reviewjudges ' questionable behavior and order discipline when necessary has reviewed only one case, that of Arthur Scott.Overall, the city's four Housing Courts remain breedinggrounds for potential abuse . Just two months ago, a BronxHousing Court clerical worker was arrested for allegedly demanding that a non-English-speaking tenant pay a $25 "fee" for filingcourt papers in response to an eviction proceeding brought by thetenant's landlord. The court employee, who pocketed the money,was discovered when the tenant became suspicious and complained. Court officials and prosecutors in the Bronx are still try-ing to determine whether any other tenants may have fallen victim to this alleged scam .A critical phase of the Scott investigation , conducted bythe Manhattan District Attorney's office, was a year-long undercover sting during which detectives caught Scott and his mainbagman, Euclid S. Watson, taking bribes on a number of landlord-

tenant cases. The picture that emerges from the more than400 pages of previously undisclosedprosecution court papers isof a lackluster jurist,besieged with debts and anappetite for illegal drugs,reduced to hustling for payoffs ranging from a few hundred bucks to several thousand dollars. Scott even triedto seduce some of the femaletenants who appeared beforehim , while at the same timetaking bribes to evict themfrom their homes .The court records portray Manhattan HousingCourt as a place where therules were regularly bentand broken. Judicial oversight was so lax that Scottand his associates felt freeto exchange bribes in thecourthouse's dingy publicrestrooms and crowdedhallways. Watson

apparently had a unique entree to the inner workings of the courthouse, even though he wasn't a lawyer, litigant or court employee .A self-described "legal consultant," Watson had been a buildingmanager for a number of landlords before hooking-up with Scott.Aburly, middle-aged man, Watson was not one to adopt a low-keystyle. He regularly came to court wearing a large cowboy hat andplastered with gold jewelry.And he openly bragged to anyone whowould listen about all the judges he allegedly had in his back pocket. In plain view of litigants and attorneys, Watson stationed himself in Scott's courtroom and awaited cues from his former boss onwhom to hit up for a bribe. On at least one occasion, according tothe court papers, Watson approached Scott while court was in session , shook hands with him , and then left the courtroom with theformer judge through a door located behind the bench.The papers also describe how Watson received favored treatment from a handful of court employees who personally escortedhim around the metal detectors at the public entrances to the courthouse at 111 Centre Street in Manhattan, through which all nonlawyers and visitors must pass. Court personnel routinely returnedhis telephone calls and provided him with information on pendingcases in which he had no apparent connection. In return, Watsondid favors for some of these court employees, such as helping themget apartments in buildings owned by friendly landlords.Some court personnel even assisted Watson in getting casestransferred to Scott from other housing judges-cases in whichbribes were ultimately paid. In one instance, a court employeeapproached several undercover agents and inquired whether theyknew where Watson was because the court employee had beentold a case needed "transferring" to Scott.

It is unclear whether the court employees who aided Scott andWatson were knowingly engaged in criminal activity or simplyguilty of poor judgment. The prosecution court records, obtainedfrom a confidential source close to the investigation, identify byname at least a dozen current and former court employees andhousing judges suspected of having some involvement in a broader bribery ring . In the court papers, one of the undercover investigators reports that Watson complained to him about having to"distribute" bribe money to a lot of different people. The two-anda-half year investigation culminated with gUilty pleas by Scott,Watson, an attorney and three landlords. Scott is currently servinga two-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half year prison sentence at theElmira Correctional Facility in New York.Yet nearly six months after Scott was sent to prison , somestill wonder why no additional court personnel were evercharged. Prosecutors say they lacked sufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges against others . For instance, was a courtemployee knowingly committing a crime when he walked intoanother housing judge's courtroom and, on Scott's instructions,removed a court file and brought it to Scott? According to thecourt papers, the answer is unclear. But one source close to theinvestigation says prosecutors ultimately found that a number ofhousing judges in Manhattan , out of plain laziness, were morethan willing to "dump" their work and transfer cases to Scott, noquestions asked. Other sources note some potential suspectsmay have been scared off in the early days of the probe , whenthe courthouse was awash in rumors that Scott was the target ofa criminal inquiry.Still, the prosecution 's own court papers reveal that at onepoint, at least, the district attorney anticipated giving immuni-CITY LIMITS


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ty to an unknown number of "reluctant witnesses," includingcourt personnel.The city's Housing; Court system has long been arecipe for scandal. Located in some of the shabbiest judicial facilities in New York, the city's four Housing Courts shoulder one ofthe state's heaviest caseloads. In 1995, there were 303,897 newcases fIled in Housing Court. In Manhattan and Brooklyn , housing judges sit in small windowless courtrooms. The courts arealways jammed with people, many of them young mothers withchildren in strollers. The lines to file court papers are seeminglyendless. "No Smoking" signs posted in courthouse hallways areblatantly ignored.On any given day, each of the city's 35 housing judges mayhear and decide as many as 40 eviction or nonpayment of rentcases, sometimes taking less than 20 minutes to dispense justice.This chaotic frenzy is compounded by the fact that landlords cometo court armed with an attorney 90 percent of the time, while tenants have lawyers in only 10 percent of all cases.To make mattersworse, most of the cases fIled in Housing Court each year are notresolved by a judge. Frequently, cases are settled in courthousehallways in one-sided negotiating sessions between an unrepresented tenant and attorneys for the landlord. Although housingjudges are supposed to review all settlements, their attention tothem can vary greatly. (See City Limits, April 1994)Scott Rosenberg, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, sayswhen it comes to these agreements,known as stipulations, some hollS-ingjudges do agood job explaining them to tenants but many more donot. He said there is a "fundamental imbalance of power" when oneparty to anegotiation has an attorney and the other does not.Angelita Anderson, executive director of the City-Wide TaskForce on Housing Court, a tenant advocacy group, says all theproblems in Housing Court are magnified by the disparity in legalrepresentation between landlords and tenants. "When one side isso largely unrepresented, their issues cannot come to light," shesays. ''They are vulnerable." She adds that there are simply toofew housing judges to handle the system's crippling caseload .'''There isn't enough time.' That is the complaint I hear all thetime from judges and court attorneys," Anderson explains.Even Justice Carey bluntly describes Housing Court as a"morass" that cries out for a major overhaul. Tenant advocatesargue Housing Court has never fulfilled its original mission toprovide a forum for tenants to force landlords to make necessaryrepairs to their apartments. Instead, they say Housing Court isnothing more than a "collection mill" for landlords and a placewhere 22,350 apartment dwellers lost their homes in 1995.Indeed, if nothing else, landlords and tenants are generally united in their antipathy towards Housing Court. But where advocatessee the legal system as stacked against tenants, many landlordsclaim Housing Court is a minefield set up to ruin them. The RentStabilization Association, which represents 25,000 city propertyowners, has a pending federal lawsuit accusing court administrators and judges of discriminating against landlords. To supporttheir charge, landlords and their attorneys frequently point out thatit can take months, even years, to evict a tenant who has stoppedpaying rent. Landlords note that last year, city housing judgesdelayed eviction proceedings against tenants 123,112 times.Despite these differences, a common area of concern to bothlandlords and tenant advocates is the court system's failure toDECEMBER 1996

effectively discipline incompetent, rude or biased housingjudges. Unlike other state judges ,housing judges are not subject tothe oversight of the StateCommission on Judicial Conduct,the independent board chargedwith reviewing the conduct ofstate jurists. Indeed, under statelaw, housing judges are technically considered "hearing officers"

A common area ofconcern to bothlandlords and tenantadvocates is the courtsystem's failure toeffectively aisc(elineincompetent, rU(1e orbiased housing judges.rather than civil court judges. Most court administrators and elected officials believe the state constitution would have to be amended to allow the judicial conduct commission to take charge ofinvestigating complaints against housing judges. Since 1973, it hasbeen left to court administrators to take this responsibility.Two years ago, after City Limits published an expose of thecourt system's internal procedure for investigating complaints ,court administrators established a permanent seven-member disciplinary committee to hear charges filed against housing judgesand to recommend possible punishment. Yet since it was established, Scott has been the only housing judge called before thecommittee .The committee has not even met since October 1995.To this day, Scott remains the only housing judge ever removedfrom office on disciplinary charges . The State Commission onJudicial Conduct, by contrast, has recommended the ouster ofmore than 100 judges since it was established in 1978.''The committee is an improvement but it is not ideal," saysAlan Beck, an official with the nonprofit Fund For MadernCourts, an organization that monitors the operation of the city'scourts. "It would be good if there was an independent commission. In a perfect world, housing judges would be subject to theCommission on Judicial Conduct."Michael Coladner, chief counsel for the Office of CourtAdministration, counters that the internal disciplinary system issufficient. He says complaints are reviewed by a housing judge 'ssupervising judge and if it is deemed serious enough, the supervisor can fIle formal charges with the seven-member disciplinarycommittee. He argues that the court system never intended to givethe disciplinary committee independent power to conduct its ownreviews of complaints.'The resistance to change in Housing Court is formidable. It is most obvious when simple reforms hit a wall, as hashappened with aproposal to install a computerized system for randomly assigning cases to housing judges . In most other courts,random assignment of judges is standard practice. But not inHousing Court.Currently, cases are assigned every morning by a court clerkand a civil court judge sitting in a large courtroom known as "Part18 ." Housing judges, whose courtrooms are denoted by a letter ofthe alphabet, are supposed to be assigned cases in alphabeticalorder. If a case is assigned to a judge sitting in ''Part A," the nextcase should go to the judge sitting in "Part B" and so on. But anattorney who pays close attention to the calendar call and theorder in which cases are assigned can manipulate the systemthrough a variety of procedural techniques. A awyer, for instance,can move to discontinue a case if it is assigned to a judge with aperceived pro-tenant or pro-landlord bias. The action can then be


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re-fued and the process started again by paying another $5 filingfee. Or, an attorney can try to predict which judge will be assignedto a case, and ask for an adjournment just before the assignmentis made if the attorney does not want that judge hearing the case.All these moves are entirely legal. But critics argue that judgeshopping is pernicious when it occurs in acourt where only one sideusually has an attorney and understands how the game is played.Court administrators began studying the feasibility ofinstalling random-assignment software more than a year ago, inresponse to criticism of the current system that arose during theScott investigation.Yet the plan is stymied, even though it would make it almostimpossible for lawyers to continue to shop for judges in this manner. Publicly, court officials say it is too expensive, noting the$30,000 price tag of installing the program in all four cityHousing Courts. They say the court system is about to conduct acomprehensive review of all its computer systems, and thereforemajor changes should be put off until a later date. But David

Rosenberg, a real estate attorney and c

city limits magazine, december 1996 issue

Documents