bout

violence?
Police Beat
L
ast winter. when Mayor Giuliani fired the director and reassigned
the staff of the police department's public affairs office, people in
the press screamed that he was sealing off a critical spigot of information. How
soon we forget. As far as the mayor and Police Commissioner William Bratton
are concerned, the move has proven bounteous beyond all expectation.
Why? Because the pair have two outside flack agencies working for them
already: The New York Daily News and the Manhattan Institute's City
Journal.
Aside from regular editorial page paeans to Commissioner Bratton, it took
three Daily News reporters to miss the story on teen arrests November 20. The
full page piece read "Rising Tide of Teen Crime: Cops grapple
.......... --,.., ... ".-
EDITORIAL
with explosion in youths packing weapons." The basis of the
story? The number of teen arrests is heading skyward. But the
hike isn't ''fueled by crack and a proliferation of guns, .. as the
reporters wrote, so much as by a proliferation of cops in the
lives of New York's young people--{l direct result, as City Limits
reported last month, of Giuliani and Bratton's "quality of life"
enforcement strategy.
As any criminal justice expert will tell you, when you increase the number
of cops on the street you get more arrests. Overall, crime rates are not up this
year. according to victim surveys and other reports. Prosecution case loads
aren't up either. according to prosecutors. The fact is, more teens are found
with weapons because more cops are stopping teens on the street and search-
ing them. More young people are also being arrested for loitering and other
very minor offenses.
Over at the City Journal. the ever-vigilant editors in search of intellectual
honesty in the public policy debate once again give a wink to intellectual dis-
honesty among their own writers. The latest issue carries a piece by (the
undoubtedly well-remunerated) Professor George Kelling of Northeastern
University about Commissioner Bratton and effective policing. Leonard Levitt
of Queens Newsday happened to discover that Kelling earned hundreds of
thousands of dollars from the Transit Police-much of it while Bratton was at
the agency's head. As usual, no disclaimer appears in the City Journal.
More on that topic later.
Andrew White
Editor
Cover photo of an East New York candlelight vigil by Steven Fish.
(ity Limits
Volume XX Number 10
City Limits is published ten times per year. monthly except
bimonthly issues in June/July and AugusVSeptember. by
the City Limits Community Information Service. Inc .. a non-
profit organization devoted to disseminating information
concerning neighborhood revitalization.
Editor: Andrew White
Senior Editor: Kim Nauer
Special Projects Editor: Kierna Mayo Dawsey
Associate Editor: Kevin Heldman
Contributing Editors: James Bradley. Rob Polner.
Glenn Thrush
Design Director: David Huang
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Business Manager: Winton Pitcoff
Proofreader: Sandy Socolar
Photographers: Ana Asian. Jim Downs.
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Sponsors:
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Housing Development. Inc.
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and Environmental Development
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Board of Directors*:
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the Public Interest
Beverly Cheuvront. City Harvest
Francine Justa. Neighborhood Housing Services
Errol Louis. Central Brooklyn Partnership
Rima McCoy. Action for Community Empowerment
Rebecca Rei ch. Low Income Housing Fund
Andrew Reicher. UHAB
Tom Robbins. Journalist
Jay Small. ANHD
Doug Turetsky. former City limits Editor
Pete Williams. National Urban League
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CITY LIMITS
}
J
I
THE GRID ~
. . ,
DECEMBER 1995

FEATURES
Motive and Opportunity ~
Some say violence is in the family, others say it's a society thing. Researchers have some
sound leads on why kids lose their cool, and in East New York's junior high schools
they' re being put to the test. by Kim Nauer
Live Free or Die ~
Who has the right to choose? Mental health consumer rights activists say psychiatric pro-
fessionals have to learn to take no for an answer. The picture blurs, however, when a
young man dies. by Kevin Heldman and Andrew White
PROFILE
Bracing for Battle ~
The New York State Tenants and Neighbors Coalition is celebrating twenty years on the
line defending rent regulation. Albany legislators are just itching to blowout the candles.
by Steven Wishnia
PIPELINES
Serving Two Masters ~
Which state law does Attorney General Dennis Vacco think deserves his defense today?
He was supposed to protect the privacy rights of HIV-infected mothers-but decided to
take the other side. by Gene Bryan Johnson
Fantasy or Real Life ~
The mayor's got a new plan to preserve the city's private housing stock. If you've been
around long enough, it might sound familiar. by James Bradley
OUT OF TOWN
Boston Massacre ~
Landlords blindsided tenant activists with a state-wide referendum on rent regulation.
Now protections are gone and rents are skyrocketing. A lesson for New York.
by Sarah McNaught and Glenn Thrush
@CTIVIS ...
Working the Net ~
The World Wide Web is full of useful information for communities-and neat pix, too.
(Want a nifty photo of your favorite bureaucrat?) by Winton Pitcoff
NOTORIOUS
Brother's a Keeper ~
Ed Phelan is not much of a Yankees fan. But he knows how to play the game.
Review
Mississippi Learning
Spare Change
Sweet Charity
Briefs
Bronx Pushed Aside
Justice for All?
Troubled Gardens
CO ...... ENTARY
DEPART ... ENTS
6,7 Editorial
Letters
Professional
Directory
Job Ads
by Glenn Thrush
129
by Harold DeRienzo
134
by Rose Marie Arce
2
4,30
32
33


Floor ...
I thought Rob Polner's long article on
the Child Welfare Administration
(October 1995) was incredibly good. City
Limits is a crucial publication for me, just
superbly done and very strong.
Jonathan Kozol
Byfield, Massachusetts
Losing Sight
I was troubled by your October cover
headline ("Turning a Blind Eye").
myself can find time to browse through
magazines, but I fmd it rewarding to
read through your publication. It is a
real voice of support for those in the
front line.
Protip Biswas
Director; Walnut Hills Redevelopment
Fouruiltion, Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio
Turn a Corner
". ____ ""' .'''._ The phrase serves to perpetuate a
negative stereotype, namely that per-
sons who are blind cannot see-not
in a physical sense, but substanti ve-
I read with great interest
Theodore Kheel's article
"Reframe the Drug Debate"
(November \995).
-
L E T T E R S
ly. Of course, as the rest of us, per-
sons who are blind can see (i.e. be
aware that) the city's child welfare
system is in chaos. This is especially
troubling in a journal of progressive
thought, whose content I value.
Alan Gartner
Dean of Research, The Graduate School,
City University of New York
Front-Line Friend
It is reinvigorating to read every issue of
City Limits. Your articles are insightful and
well-written. Your viewpoints are diverse.
It is not often that practitioners like
The success of the various
drug cartels in meeting the
demands of their consumers is
just too overwhelming to control by con-
ventional means.
The fact is that we shall never be able
to control the use of drugs unless we legal-
ize them and introduce a very powerful
and pervasive educational program. I don't
see this happening unless the income from
sales is used to fund the educational pro-
gram and to pay for the agency responsible
for administering the program. I agree that
the focus should be on the details of how
to legalize rather than the emotional issue
of yes or no. Clarify, allow all points of
view to be aired with an emphasis on the
facts and consequences.
Norman Kaufman
Upper East Side
Mega-Me .... er Miscue
City Limits missed a great opportunity
("Cutting the Deal," October 1995) to
challenge readers to think about how com-
munity groups must respond to the ever-
growing trend of mega-banks. Instead we
were treated to an attempt to show divi-
sions between community groups.
The NorthEast Reinvestment Alliance,
[Continued on page 30]
mBankers1i:ust Company
Community Development Group
A resource for the non-profit
development community

Gary Hattem, Managing Director
Amy BrusHoff, Vice President
280 Park Avenue, 19West
New York, New York 10017
Tel: 212 .. 454 .. 3677 Fax: 212 .. 454 .. 2380
CITY LIMITS
DECEMBER 1995
~ ...
... ,
CHASE
Community
Development
Corporation
The Chase Community Development
Corporation Finances Housing and
Economic Development Projects,
including:
New Construction
Rehabilitation
Special Needs Housing
Homeless Shelters
Home Mortgages
Small Business Loans
Loan Consortia
For information, call the
Community-Based Development Unit
(212) 552-9737
We Look Forward to Your Call!
-
BRIEFS
Short Shots
FIND THE Hidden
Motive: It's been a
year sin(e President
Clinton proposed (on-
verting the publi(
housing system to
vou(hers, and thus
alienated affordable
-
BRONX PUSHED ASIDE
ically expendable area. "Dump
it in the Bronx, that's their atti-
tude," quips Dalma De La
Rosa, president of NWBCCC.
Croton Reservoir," Gershey
says. He maintains filtration
plants are more prone to
human error and contamina-
tion, and, if they must be built
at all, would be better off clos-
er to the originating reservoir
and in less populated areas.
Rudolph Giuliani and
massive, $1 billion filtration
plant is slated to be built in the
Jerome Park Reservoir in the
Kingsbridge Heights section of
the Bronx. The five-story plant
will occupy 40 acres, and will
take five to seven years to
build. The project is bitterly
opposed by a consortium of
neighborhood groups that are
members of the Northwest
Bronx Community and Clergy
Coalition (NWBCCC).
The neighborhood groups
are concerned with the effect
such a large scale project will
have on working class com-
munities surrounding Jerome
Park, including a string of col-
leges and high schools known
as "Education Mile" that
serves 25,000 students. "It will
have a serious impact on our
community: says Tina
Argenti, President of Friends
of Jerome Park Reservoir.
"This plant will bring noise,
pollution, dangerous chemi-
cals and other hazards:
George Pataki may have been
all smiles when they
announced a much-heralded
watershed agreement two
months ago. But community
groups in the Northwest Bronx
are crying foul.
They contend the state and
city put all their efforts into
preserving water quality in the
Delaware and Catskill water-
sheds west of the Hudson
River and paid little attention to
protecting the Croton
Reservoir and its watershed-
the source of 10 percent of the
city's water supply-from
development, opting instead to
build a filtration plant in a polit-
Critics of the plant cite
experts such as Dr. Edward
Gershey of the New York
Academy of Medicine, who
maintain that filtration is not
the best method for ensuring
drinking water quality, "I am
firmly of the belief that the
water quality can be best
improved at the source-the
For now, community lead-
ers are urging the federal
Environmental Protection
Agency to push a regional
watershed plan that would
avoid filtration. If that fails,
activists are suggesting alter-
native sites for the plant in
wealthy Westchester County.
They recognize that West-
chester-a Republican strong-
hold that voted heavily for
Governor Pataki-is politically
more powerful than the Bronx.
But Argenti insists Bronx resi-
dents should not have to pay
the price for upstate develop-
ment along the Croton water-
shed. "Why should we pay for
the pollution caused by upstate
New York?"
As part of the plan to clean
up the city's drinking water, a
housing activists. What
was he thinking?
A((ording to HUD spe-
dal assistant Mar(
Weiss, the only reason
the poliy didn't go
through Congress was
be(ause the White
House proposed it.
"We took away the
Republi(ans' main
agenda and split them
in two," he told a
gathering at the New
York Planner's Network
Forum last month.
"Now it's a dead horse
and should be a dead
horse."
STALIN AND
CLINTON, comrades
in defense? Weiss
also (Ompared
Clinton's year-ago pro-
posal for downsizing
HUD to the Soviet
Union's "deep defense"
strategy during World
War II: If you are in a
weak position, give up
lots of territory in
order to regroup in
strength. The (ompari-
son is more apt than
he might suppose.
Stalin betrayed his
friends before the war,
'allied with the right
(Hitler), shot his best
James Bradley
strategists-and then
nearly lost all of
Russia. "Deep defense"
was just a kind
euphemism for near-
defeat thanks to bad
judgement at the top.
CITVLlMITS
TROUBLED GARDENS
The giant cockroach was
stoppable. The old folks
aren't.
When word got out this
summer that a much-used
community garden on Eighth
Street on the Lower East Side
was slated for demolition to
facilitate the filming of a
movie featuring la cucatacha,
angry residents did a little
exterminating of their own.
After a deluge of phone calls,
letters and demonstrations,
the roach invasion was suc-
cessfully turned back and the
ABC Garden was saved.
But the victory appears
short-lived. The community
garden is now scheduled to be
razed for Casa Victoria, a
housing project for low
income seniors, and open
space activists admit their sit-
uation looks bleak. "This may
be the martyr garden," says
Felicia Young, director of Earth
Celebrations, a Lower East
Side environmental group.
"The loss of ABC may be what
galvanizes the community to
fight for all the gardens."
With renewed develop-
ment pressures in this com-
munity, a number of gardens
built on once-abandoned lots
JUSTICE FOR ALL?
Talk about strange bedfellows.
The Coalition of Housing Development Fund Corporations
(HDFC), a group of low-income, tenant owned co-ops wants to
see a $eparate section of Housing Court that would deal with
issues relating spacifically to coops and condominiums. So do the
Coordinating Council of Cooperatives and the Council of New York
Cooperatives, two organizations representing the city's more
affluent co-op owners.
With that area of common ground, the groups have joined
together to press their demand. Under the current system, co-op
owners maintain, Housing Court judges are too immersed in the
adversarial world of tenant-landlord disputes that bear little sim-
ilarity to the co-op situation. They say the judges show litde
understanding of laws and regulations applicable to co-ops.
For low-income co-ops, the issue is simple: one
tenant can bring down an entire building. According to Jorge
Reyes-Montblanc, president of the HDFC Coalition, the incompe-
tence of Housing Court judges can lead to financial hardship in
economically-vulnerable buildings. Last year, he says, his build-
ing on West 136th Street had to shell out .ooo in legal bills.
Tenant activists are dismayed by the proposal David Robinson
of the Lagal Services Housing Task Force argues that 45 percent
of co-op residents citywide are in fact tenants, not shareholders,
and should be treated the same as any other tenant in Housing
Court What's more, he says, creating a special courtroom for co-
ops could foster favoritism because only one or two judges would
preside. 'It can be a recipe for disaster; he says.
'From our perspective, housing court doesn't work,' retorts
Reyes-Montblanc. We're willing to try anything." James Bradley
are facing imminent demoli-
tion. Young and other activists
are organizing around a strat-
egy that might save some of
the gardens by creating a land
trust that would raise money
from private contributors and
purchase as many ofthe prop-
erties as possible. The lots are
currently owned by the city.
In September, Community
Board 3 sent a list to the city
of supposedly vacant lots that
they had approved for possi-
ble development. Some are
expected to be used for low
income housing, others sold
to private developers for mar-
ket rate projects.
Some of the lots on the list
include community gardens,
such as Albert's Garden on
Second Street and another on
Fourth Street. ' It was done
somewhat maliciously in that
the community board knew
that a couple of sites on that
list were very active commu-
nity gardens and not vacant
lots: says Phyllis Reich, a pro-
ject manager with the Trust
for Public Land. ' But I think it's
understood by the political
community thatthere are a lot
of voices on the Lower East
Side and the community
board doesn't have the only
vision for the neighborhood.'
The TPL is advising the gar-
deners on developing their
own trust.
Kelly Caldwell
CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE
101
TURNSTILE JUMPING: 1WO TECHNIQUES
ElIII..n A
--.

"-"""' by pIodnoNn<b on _g""-
whiWliftirc "'" fed and IiCH'ao OWl' the Iurnsti},r, aMI\.
at CIftfuI not 1:0 bump head on Itw: overhead bar of the
nl!Wft'modeI tumstilea. QujckJy tx.rd your train and
baInd in with IN mane$. Not l"fll"(III'IJ for thoM
with !mown hNrt probkmI. Ot the aSfML
ElIIIIIIT
.....
A mote eAepnt and intonspicuoul tumstiIe juInpins
"""'UqULEx<ao ... by_ .... t_"""'"'"
ann and pullitI, i1 towards you to the point Wustratfd
Slick the tumstHr in the
a't'ued. QukkJy board your train and blend in with the
tnUML Could be . difficult ...t:r for the Precnant

PROTEST $1.50 TOKENS
JUMP!
Monday, November 13
--.............
BRIEFS"
This flyer
appeared on
Lower East
Side lamp-
posts the
weekend of
the subway
fare hike.
Steven
Jablonski, the
flyer's design-
er, says he is
just a frustrat-
ed rider. No
word on how
many heeded
the call.
Resources
WILLFUL
IGNORANCE. More
than half of Ameri(a's
white people think the
"average Afri(an
Ameri(an is as well off
or better off than the
average white person
in terms of jobs,"
a(wrding to a re(ent
Washington Post poll.
Almost as many said
the same thing in
terms of in(ome. In
truth, as the latest
issue of the Left
Business Observer-(212)
874-4020-points out,
"bla(k unemployment
is twi(e that of whites,
and bla(k inwmes, 40
per(ent lower." What's
more, these iII-
informed whites heavi-
ly favor (uts to food
stamps and an end to
affirmative action.
PRISONS SPROUT
Uke F1owen: "People
of wlor make up more
than 83 per(ent of
(New York) state's
prison population,
while they represent
less than 25 per(ent of
the state's general
population. A large
majority ... wme from
low inwme, inner-dty
(ommunities. If the
expanded use of inGlr-
(eration were truly
effective in wntrolling
(rime and improving
publi( safety, these
wmmunities should
have evolved into
dtadels of law and
order." For a simple
and (ompelling analysis
of the numbers, see "Is
Prison Expansion the
Answer to Crime?" from
the Correctional
Assoc:iation of New
York. Call (212) 254-
5700
DECEMBER 1995
-
B
PROFILE ~
,
NYSTNC has
become "the
principal voice
for tenants in
New York:
thanks in large
part to co-
founder Michael
McKee.
:M
Bracing for Battle
Rent regulation is in the governor's crosshairs. But the New
York State Tenants and Neighbors Coalition is 20 years -old
and fixing for a fight. By Steven Wishnia
, 'peoPle don't organize for
fun," says Michael McKee,
co-founder of the New
York State Tenants and
Neighbors Coalition. 'They do it because
they have to."
In 1971, McKee was working for a
New York City tenant organization when
he heard the call. Struggling to fight
Governor Nelson Rockefeller's vacancy
decontrol law, which eventually purged
thousands of affordable apartments from
the rent-control rolls, McKee began net-
working with other tenant activists from
across the state. He burned up his phone
wires, doing what he could from his
downstate base by organizing rent strikes,
letter-writing campaigns, one-day bus
trips to Albany-the standard tool kit of
Civics 101 maneuvers.
On the other side, the landlords had
money, influential lobbyists and a history
of hegemony in Albany. Guess who won.
"We lost because there was absolutely
no tenant lobby in Albany, that was the
problem," recalls McKee. "We had no real
presence in the legislature, no real clout.
That's what killed us. In the end the
decontrol bills passed by one vote in the
Senate. If we had had any kind of influ-
ence in the legislature we could have
stopped it.
"It was then that we realized we des-
perately needed a statewide tenants' orga-
nization."
By 1975, vacancy decontrol had been
given the boot by legislators made starkly
aware of their tenant-heavy constituen-
cies. And McKee and tenant groups repre-
senting all regions of the state had created
NYSTNC, now the oldest statewide ten-
ants advocacy and lobbying group in the
country. Over the following two decades,
NYSTNC became a powerful player on
housing issues, racking up an impressive
roster of victories, not the least of which
was keeping the state's rent regulations
entirely intact until 1993.
As the organization celebrates its 20th
anniversary, NYSTNC's organizers know
that Governor George Pataki and
Republicans in the state Senate are prepar-
ing to roll back many of their gains. Some
of these newly powerful conservatives
aim to press decontrol and get rid of rent
regulations altogether when the current
authorization bill expires in 1997.
Meanwhile, NYSTNC also faces ques-
tions from other housing groups about its
ability to change with the times. Some crit-
ics say that the coalition needs to be more
responsive to the needs of small building
owners and less eager to defend every
aspect of current rent regulation. They say
the group is wrongheaded for opposing the
deregulation of 40 apartments rented by
middle class and wealthy tenants.
McKee, who is now head of his
group's fundraising efforts, has responded
to these pressures by embarking on an
unprecedented expansion of NYSTNC.
The effort has increased the group's mem-
bership rolls to 3,800-up fourfold in the
last year-and to 100 member organiza-
tions, ranging from the St. Nicholas
Neighborhood Preservation Corporation
in Brooklyn to the United Tenants of
Albany. Its budget has also mushroomed,
from $24,000 to $152,OOO-all grassroots
money, according to McKee.
As Assemblyman A.B. "Pete" Grannis
(D-Manhattan), former chair of the
Housing Committee, puts it: NYSTNC "is
the principal voice for tenants" in New
York State.
Landmark Law
If the current decade is a time of
defending programs and repulsing attacks,
the 1970s were years when NYSTNC was
on the offensive.
In 1975, NYSTNC successfully lob-
bied for the landmark warranty-of-habit-
ability law, which requires landlords to
maintain their buildings in livable condi-
tion if they want to collect rent. Four years
later, the group scored another major vic-
tory, winning passage of a law barring
retaliatory evictions of tenants who com-
plain about code violations.
By the mid-1980s, NYSTNC had
begun organizing tenants in privately
owned, federally supported housing. In
1992, the group founded the New York
State Tenant Information Service, bent on
preserving the affordability of the more
than 200,000 such apartments around the
state. The group is headed by executive
director Billy Easton.
Last year, when President Clinton pro-
posed turning federally supported housing
over to the whims of the private market,
issuing rent subsidy vouchers to tenants
and deregulating the housing projects,
Easton's crew delivered 5,000 mock-up
housing vouchers signed by tenants to the
front gate of the White House. After all,
the president lives in government-funded
housing, too.
A thousand of those mock vouchers
came from tenants in the Unidos project in
the South Bronx, a 38-building complex
with over 1,200 apartments, most of them
in serious disrepair, where NYSTNC has
been organizing for two years.
Wilma Johnson, a Unidos tenant orga-
nizer who has lived in the project for 20
years, says residents have been fighting
alongside NYSTNC to remedy leaky
pipes, water-damaged apartment ceilings,
elevators that often don't work and sod-
den hallways and stairwells. The group
has held workshops on tenants' rights,
CITY LIMITS
given tips on organizing and dealing with
bureaucracy, and arranged meetings with
top HUD officials.
Now, repairs are being done, she says,
"slowly, but surely."
Prlvat. SKtor
Even though NYSTNC prizes such
victories in public housing programs,
McKee and others at the organization
have long accepted the reality that the vast
majority of affordable apartments in New
York have to come from the private sector.
Keeping rents on privately owned
apartments as low as possible is the cen-
terpiece of NYSTNC's lobbying agenda
and the rationale for the group's unyield-
ing support of all existing rent regulations.
NYSTNC opposes any attempt to deregu-
late cheap apartments-even those rented
by people whom critics describe as well-
to-do hoarders.
Lately, this position has come under
fire from some housing advocates who
feel that in many aspects, rent regulations
are merely a middle- and upper-class sub-
sidy that misallocates apartments, enabling
longtime tenants-such as elderly singles
with grown children-to stay in large,
cheap homes while younger families live
in overcrowded, overpriced apartments.
NYSTNC's unqualified support of
rent control is flawed, charges Frank
Braconi of the Citizens Housing and
Planning Council, a think-tank supported
by landlords and developers as well as
some nonprofit housing advocates.
Braconi says groups like NYSTNC
need to be more sensitive to the precarious
financial position of some small land-
lords. "If a building is losing money, you
can' t close it like you would a failing
deli," he says. "If the left doesn't recog-
nize that as a problem, they're kidding
themselves."
"Buildings need a certain amount of
income to operate," agrees Clara Fox of
the New York Housing Conference, a city-
wide coalition of affordable-housing
developers and managers. ''Tenants need a
certain amount of income to afford that
housing. But wherever a gap exists, you
can't expect owners to cover it."
Braconi, a self-described "centrist,"
predicts that the 1997 session in Albany
will produce a modified form of vacancy
decontrol, under which empty apartments
are allowed to go up to market rate then
get locked in to a regulated .rent increase
DECEMBER 1995
0/212,000
rent-stabilized
tenants with
rents below
$400, more
than half earn
less than
$10,000 a year.
process afterwards.
"It's great to know Frank has a crystal
ball," retorts McKee. "But I don't agree
with him. "
Luxury DKontrol
McKee's response to NYSTNC's crit-
ics is simple: rent regulation isn' t perfect,
but it works. He agrees that it is a paradox
for progressives like himself to be fierce
defenders of the status quo, but says that
"despite all the anomalies and problems,"
rent regulations have kept the median sta-
bilized rent in the city below $600.
In 1993, NYSTNC opposed a rent law
that upon vacancy, decontrolled apart-
ments that rented for more than $2,000.
The law also eliminated regulation of lux-
ury apartments occupied by tenants with
annual incomes of more than $250,000.
McKee calls the 1993 measure a major
victory for the real estate lobby because it
established the precedent of an income
test as part of the rent regulation system.
Though the change only affected a minus-
cule number of tenants, he maintains that
landlords now have a foothold to push for
lowering the income threshold to the point
where middle-class renters will be hurt.
If that happens, McKee adds, rent regu-
lation will be seen as a program exclusive-
ly for the poor. Without a middle class con-
stituency, regulation will be much more
vulnerable to political attack. "It will be
chipped away, chipped away and eroded,"
he says, in the same way that Medicaid and
welfare benefits are now under siege.
"What's wrong with subsidizing the
middle class?" adds Assemblyman
Grannis. "You want the middle class to
stay in the city."
In any case, supporters of rent regula-
tion point out that the oft-reported image
of millionaires paying $300 for six-room
Central Park West apartments is totally
beside the point. According to figures
compiled by William Rowen of the
Metropolitan Council on Housing from
the latest federal Housing and Vacancy
Survey of New York City, of the 212,000
stabilized tenants who pay less than $400
a month in rent, barely 200 have annual
incomes above $100,000. More than half
of them make less than $10,000 a year.
NYSTNC also questions whether the
current regulations are in fact a burden to
most landlords. "The truth is that the vast
majority are doing just fine," says Billy
Easton.
Nevertheless, the group is exploring
possible proposals to give strapped small
owners a break. James Garst, one of
NYSTNC's Albany lobbyists, says he's
working on a plan to reform the state's
procedure for granting rent increases to
landlords with hardship cases. The plan
would link the increase to an assessment
of how much equity a given landlord has
in his or her building. This formula, Garst
explains, would help longtime small
owners without offering relief to specula-
tors carrying heavy debt-loads. These
speculators, he says, should not be given
a break if their troubles are the result of
borrowing too much money at exorbitant
interest rates, a common situation in low
income neighborhoods (see City Limits,
May 1995).
Grannis thinks NYSTNC's next few
years will be among its hardest. The
Republicans in Albany are interested in
hobbling rent regulation, he says, "not
making the system better .. .. It's unrealistic
to think we' re going to hold this system
intact in 1997."
But McKee is optimistic and fLXing for
a fight.
"I believe we can beat the real estate
lobby with an effort on the part of ten-
ants," he says. "It's going to be very diffi-
cult, but we' ve got something on our side:
two and a half million people statewide
who live in rent regulated apartments.
"And these people will be heard."
Steven Wishnia is a frequent contributor
to City Limits.

e
5
OUT OF TOWN ~
,
Frank Bramanante
of Jamaica Plain
turns 75 years old
on December 31.
The following day,
his rent could
more than double.
Boston Massacre
With rent control dead, Massachusetts tenants face towering
rents, no eviction protection and, just maybe, the streets.
By Sarah McNaught and Glenn Thrush
T
heresa Mataitus has lived in her
one-bedroom apartment in the
Brighton section of Boston since
John F. Kennedy was president.
Now she's preparing for her fust moving
day in 34 years.
"I have no family," says the 63-year-
old Mataitus, who suffers from emphyse-
ma and a neuromuscular disorder that ren-
ders her fit for only part-time work at a
nursing home. Recently, she received
notice from her landlord
that her rent was going up
from $150 a month to $950
by the first of the year.
"Now I have to go into
some sort of housing for the
elderly," she says. "And
that's if they even have
room for me."
Last November,
Massachusetts voters nar-
r o w y approved a ballot
measure to wipe out rent
control and regulation
throughout the state.
On January I, all but a
few of the city's most vul-
nerable citizens will be
stripped of their protection
from eviction and balloon-
ing rents-protections they
have enjoyed since 1970.
On New Year's Day
1995, 65,000 Bostonians
lost their equivalent of New
York's rent stabilization
laws, which included anti-
eviction rules and some
caps on rent hikes; some
10,000 more lost their rent
control. This New Year's
Dayan estimated 10,000
more tenants-mostly low-
income elderly people-
will lose their guarantee of
affordable housing.
People like Mataitus
have three options. One,
they can get their name
placed on a 30,000-name
waiting list for public hous-
ing, which could take years
to bear fruit even though the 3,500 elderly
applicants are supposed to be given top
priority. Two, they can apply for one of a
handful of one-year rent-control exten-
sions that are being allotted.
Three, they can hit the street.
Frank Bramanante is caught some-
where between Option One and Option
Three. Ironically, he turns 75 on New
Year's Eve, and will likely face a huge
rent increase the day after his birthday.
He's been moved up on the waiting list for
special housing for the elderly, but evic"
tion from his Jamaica Plain apartment is a
real possibility.
"My wife is dead five years," says
Bramanante, a World War IT vet who has
lived in his current home for 22 years.
''Together we could do anything. But now
I'm too old to walk the street alone."
"It's going to be disaster," says
Matthew Henzy, an organizer at the
Massachusetts Tenants Organization
(MTO). "Actually," he adds, "it's already
a disaster."
Landlord Lobby
The drive to undo Massachusetts' rent
regulations is about as old as the rent pro-
tection itself. In 1970, when rent regula-
tion took effect, the landlord lobby imme-
diately mobilized to roll it back.
"We have been working, oh God, for
close to twenty-five years trying to get
this thing changed and make it more palat-
able," says Ed Shanahan, director of the
Rental Housing Association, a division of
Boston's powerful real estate board.
In 1975, Mayor Kevin White helped
pass a vacancy decontrol law that for-
bade tenants from passing their rent-con-
trolled apartments on to anyone after
they left. Over the years, the provision
has purged more than 60,000 flats from
the rent-control rolls-but each of those
apartments retained eviction protections
and rent caps set by the Boston Rent
Equity Board.
In 1993, a group of Cambridge land-
lords decided they would try to eliminate
all forms of rent control and stabilization
in one stroke by launching a statewide ref-
erendum campaign. In addition to affect-
ing the 80,000-plus rent regulated apart-
ments in Boston, the effort sought to
decontrol 4,000 units in nearby Brookline
and 12,000 more in Cambridge. They
hoped to appeal to voters living outside
the metropolitan Boston area who had no
personal interest in preserving the system.
With help from Boston's real estate asso-
ciation, they gathered the 90,000 signa-
tures needed to place the measure on the
November ballot.
At fust tenant groups did not take the
threat seriously. Then, within the space of
a few months, the landlords raised $1 mil-
lion and launched a series of commercials
trumpeting the fact that the high-paid
CITY LIMITS
mayor of Cambridge lived in rent-con-
trolled lUxury.
That's when tenant organizers realized
they were in for the fight of their lives. "We
were all sort of in denial," Henzy admits.
"In a fight like this you've really got to start
earlier than we did. We raised $100,000,
which was good, but we were still outspent
ten to one. And we got no help from the
national tenant organizations."
The referendum passed 51 percent to
49 percent.
The impact of the rent-control defeat
won't be fully clear for years. But one fact
is obvious: rents are rising. The federal
Department of Housing and Urban
Development estimates that most former
rent-controlled apartments will double in
cost, while in some areas the average per-
month rate will rise as much as 376 per-
cent. Over the first six months of 1995,
MTO conducted an informal poll of 331
rent-regulated tenants and found rent
increases have already been averaging
113 percent.
Shanahan, however, says tenants' dis-
placement and pain have been overstated.
"Last year, about this same time we were
hearing about blood on the streets," he
says. "We heard that people were going to
be evicted and there was going to be death
on the sidewalk grates.
"We've seen a goodly number of peo-
ple choosing to move to the next phases in
their personal lives. Look, if you were liv-
ing in a $I,OOO-a-month apartment and
were paying only a couple of hundred
bucks, you were able to stowaway a sig-
nificant amount of cash."
Henzy counters that most of the ten-
ants harmed were poor. He has been dis-
tributing a fact sheet with anecdotal horror '
stories (Mataitus and Bramanante among
them) and has also been sharing the
results of another disturbing, if incom-
plete, survey: The Fenway Community
Develop-ment Corporation sent out ques-
tionnaires to 100 elderly residents who
lost protection in 1994. Sixty of them said
they had to move from their old apart-
ments as a result of decontrol.
Many of the survey letters came back
with "return to sender" stamped across
their face.
Counterattack
Even though tenants are being hurt,
the effort to reinstate protections has
sputtered.
DECEMBER 1995
Boston Mayor Thomas MeDino has
promised a new counterattack, but has
thus far proposed nothing. Recently,
though, he announced that the city had
received $6.6 million in HUD grants to
build 125 units of housing for the elderly
in South Boston, Dorchester and East
Boston.
In Cambridge, tenant advocates hoped
Harvard University, which owns about
1,000 rent-controlled units, would keep its
rates at rent-control levels voluntarily. But
the school disappointed many by opting
only to cap the rents of its 94 lowest-
income tenants while boosting rents on
the remaining units to market rates. The
school also plans to sell off 24 buildings,
allowing the new owners to charge what-
ever they choose, according to Kathy
Spiegelman, associate vice president of
Harvard Planning and Real Estate.
On larger fronts, MTO has pressed the
state legislature to restore the provisions
undone in the 1994 vote. Their effort fell
short in the capitol last year and hasn't
been faring much better this term. And,
even though Henzy says he can probably
get a majority of the votes in each house,
he admits that winning the required two-
thirds margin to overcome the almost-cer-
tain veto of GOP Governor William Weld
is a long shot.
Tenant groups in Cambridge have been
trying to get a restore-rent -control referen-
dum on the state ballot in 1996, but Henzy
has not supported the initiative, which he
says could be a damning blow if it reach-
es the ballot and then fails there.
"We don't have the resources or the
votes throughout the state to undo the
damage through the referendum process,"
he says. "We've got to face the facts. It's
going to be a long and hard battle."
Frank Brarnanante, meanwhile, is
expecting two phone calls. The first one,
he hopes, will be his social worker telling
him when he can move into a new apart-
ment. The other one-from his landlord-
he hopes will come a little later on .
Sarah McNaught is a reporter for the
Boston Phoenix.
of
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.'
6
Serving Two Masters
Attorney General Dennis Vacco took an oath to defend the state in court. Was
he wrong to back a lawsuit to overturn his government's HN-testing disclosure
policy? By Gene Bryan Johnson
G
overnor George Pataki strode up
to the podium at the headquar-
ters of the Association to
Benefit Children two months
ago announcing that the state had changed
its mind. His administration had decided to
settle a lawsuit in state Supreme Court
seeking to institute a new program of
mandatory HIV testing of all infants born
in New York.
Currently, every newborn is anony-
mously tested for HIV, but the test results
are kept confidential-used only for statis-
tical analysis. The privacy rule preserves
complete anonymity in the HIV testing
process, based on the concern that women
and babies found to be HIV-positive would
be vulnerable to discrimination in housing,
dant-intervenor" in the lawsuit, believes that
Vacco should have stepped aside. Others in
the legal community agree.
The HIV Law Project represents home-
less and other indigent men and women
with AIDS. After the litigation had been
brought, McGovern petitioned the judge to
allow her to enter the case, she says,
because she believed the Republican attor-
ney general didn't intend to fight the suit
in good faith. She raised a vexing legal and
ethical issue:
"If this is the way these things are
going to be handled, the governor simply
needs to get his friends to bring lawsuits
on issues that he wants to see policy
changes on," says McGovern. "Then he
can just have the attorney general settle."
II/ believe the attorney general is the
lawyer for the state, and lawyers
.. - . - ~ - ~ .. , ... -
F
PIPELINE
which the state is interested." The courts
have never decisively ruled if this means
the attorney general must fight all lawsuits
with equal force.
Broad Discretion
Still, Gillers says he thinks Vacco should
have recused himself from the case and
allowed others to negotiate a settlement on
his behalf. The replacement counsel could
have been chosen by the state legislature or
others in the administration.
''Vacco's job is to defend policy, not sub-
vert it by putting up a weak defense," Gillers
adds.
Not all ethicists agree, however. "This
isn't an easy question," concedes Hofstra
law professor Monroe Friedman. But
Friedman thinks Vacco's behavior was in
order. He says that an elected official has
"broad discretion in such matters" and
could decide which lawsuits to defend and
which to concede.
Vacco himself has no doubts about his
role. "It was the lawsuit that prompted a
thorough review of existing regulations
and laws, not vice versa," says his
spokesperson, Joe Mahoney. "It wasn't as
if, prior to the lawsuit, people [in Vacco's
medical services and employment if their
medical records were exposed-which is a
cornmon enough occurrence. AIDS advo-
cates statewide have been passionate sup-
porters of the privacy rule.
traditionally don't make policy,
they enforce policy."
-
The lawsuit settlement would eliminate
that anonymity, however, in an effort to
direct medical assistance to HIV-positive
newborns. From the time the association's
case was filed in March, the Pataki admin-
istration let it be known that it was sympa-
thetic to the organization's goal. The gover-
nor's announcement of an accommodating
settlement, therefore, came as little surprise.
Pataki was not the only state official
voicing support for the litigation. In fact,
Attorney General Dennis Vacco was on
record as supporting the association's pro-
disclosure position. Yet Vacco was the
same man responsible for defending the
privacy policy in court. His equivocal
position raises a long-disputed question:
when a state policy conflicts with the pol-
itics of the state's attorney, should he
recuse himself from the case?
Cooci Faith
Terry McGovern, an attorney with
Manhattan's HIV Law Project and a "defen-
To prove her point that Vacco was
biased, McGovern cites an editorial Vacco
wrote in the September 12 Albany Tzmes-
Union. "I firmly support the unblinding of
mv test results so parents can be provided
with critically important information that
will allow them to make necessary deci-
sions," he wrote.
Stephen Gillers, a New York
University Law School professor who
teaches ethics, thinks Vacco's conduct
straddled a serious ethical fault line.
''If the attorney general disagrees with
state policy, what does he do when someone
sues against that policy?" Gillers asks. " I
believe the attorney general is the lawyer
for the state and lawyers traditionally don't
make policy, they [enforce] policy."
At issue is how much discretion an
official like Vacco should have in choosing
which lawsuits to vigorously fight. The
New York State constitution merely stipu-
lates that the attorney general is required to
"defend all actions and proceedings in
office] were going around saying we think
that the tests should be unblinded.
"If the voters don't like the way policies
are set," he adds, "they can change the
leaders and go back to what they had
before."
There is potential for this type of con-
flict on even more explosive issues than
the mV-testing lawsuit. During the 1994
race, Vacco, who campaigned on an anti-
abortion stance, was asked if he could rig-
orously enforce laws guaranteeing access
to abortion clinics. His answer: "I think it's
ludicrous to suggest that I'm going to deny
my oath of office."
That oath reads, in part: "to faithfully
discharge the duties of the office of attor-
ney general." One of those duties, Vacco's
critics point out, was to defend the state
against the HIV-testing lawsuit.
Gene Bryan Johnson is a reporter for
National Public Radio and WNYClNew
York.
CITY LIMITS
-
- - - - - ~ - - - _ r ~ - ' ' ' . ' ' . -
Working the Net
@CTIVISM
The Internet offers a host of tools for community activists. By Winton Pitcoff
A
midst all the OJ jokes, games,
and advertising that litter the
Internet, some truly valuable
resources can be found. The
trick is knowing where to look. The Internet
is far from replacing old-fashioned
research and networking, but it's a valu-
able tool that has come a long way from its
experimental stages a few years ago.
The World Wide Web is currently the
fastest growing part of the Internet, thanks
to its appealing graphics and relative ease
of use. Any individual or organization can
(for a price, of course) construct a "home
page" for inclusion on the Web. This page
can contain text and graphics, articles, and
"links" to other sites. Simply "point and
click" on what is identified as a "link,"
and you're off to a new site.
Those hoping to find these offerings will
need to have a high-speed modem, an
Internet account and software known as a
"web browser. " Companies providing
Internet access abound and monthly access
costs are now relatively cheap. After sign-
ing up, users can download a web browser
for free. Buying a good book on maneuver-
ing the net is also recommended.
Compiling a "complete" list of Internet
resources on any subject would be impossi-
ble. Sites appear and disappear every day,
providing information ranging from the
blatantly useless to the truly invaluable.
There are, however, a few choice sites that
planners and community activists should
make a habit of looking at. Good places to
start are:
Neighborhoods Online (http://liber-
tynet.orglcommunity/philalnatl.html) This
is the most comprehensive site for neigh-
borhood organizing. Topics include hous-
ing and community development, health
and human services and neighborhood
environment. The news site contains con-
tinuously updated infonnation on legisla-
tion likely to affect neighborhoods, and
frequently takes the extra step of suggest-
ing actions activists can take. The people
who maintain the site seem to be on top of
what's going on with the Internet, and are
constantly adding links to new sites.
The Guide to Internet Resources for
Nonprofit Public Service Organizations
(http://asa.ugl.lib.umich.edu/chdocs/non-
profits/nonprofits.html) This has hundreds
DECEMBER 1995
of links to sites with infonnation on topics
ranging from immigration to urban devel-
opment. Also available are job postings,
grant announcements and Federal Register
infonnation relevant to nonprofit public
service organizations.
The University of Buffalo School of
Architecture and Planning (http:
/ larch. buffalo.edu: 800 I /internet/h_pa_
resources.htrnl) One of the best sites for
those interested in planning and community
development. It provides listings of other
web sites on topics ranging from housing to
the environment to historic preservation.
The University of California at Berkeley
(http://www.lib.berkeley.edul ENVI/city-
web.html) has a similar site filled with other
useful web links.
Government sites abound on the web.
Those who can wade through the propa-
ganda should check these out:
The Department of Housing and
Urban Development (http://www.hud.
gov) Besides providing nifty photos of
Secretary Cisneros, this home page offers
comprehensive descriptions of HUD pra-
grams, printed resources, and infonnation
on requests for proposals.
The Bureau of the Census
(http://www.census.gov) Not surprising,
the most comprehensive Web provider of
census data. The site is also equipped with
links to other sites, mostly universities,
which provide easier-ta-read versions of
the same material.
Technical support organizations are
beginning to make use of the web as well.
Find:
The Center for Neighborhood
Technology (http://www.cnt.org) This site
includes organizing material and articles
from back issues of CNT's award-winning
magazine The Neighborhood Works,
directly accessible at (http://www.cnt.orgl
tnw/tnwhome.htm).
The Policy Research Action Group
(hup://www.luc.eduldepts/sociology/prag)
A collaborative partnership between four
universities and more than 20 community
organizations, the site is focused primarily
on Chicago issues, but has some resources
of national relevance as well.
The Contact Center (http://www.con-
tactorg) is a New York-based organization
trying to develop a network of neighborhood
centers. Their home page provides infonna-
tion on how you can get involved.
The Planning Commissioner's
Journal (http://www.webcom.com/-pcj/
welcome.htrnl) The quarterly publication's
home page provides text from some arti-
cles and links to resources for citizens
interested in local planning issues.
Some sites specific to New York
include:
The Public Advocate of New York
City (http://spanky.osc.cuny.eduladvo-
cate!) Mark Green's site provides an on-
line "Green Book" and other infonnation
about city resources.
The Clinton Community Garden
(http://www.inch.com/-dipper/clinton.html)
lnfonnation on community gardening and
beautiful photos of the garden on West
28th St.
The New York Public Library
(http://gopher.nypl.orgl) Provides access
to some library resources from your com-
puter.
Of course, the World Wide Web is not
all that the Internet has to offer. Those who
love electronic mail should check out the
"listservs," electronic mailing lists devoted
to a particular topic. Subscribers post
infonnation or queries, which get sent to
everyone on the list. The result, optimally,
is an infonnative "discussion."
One of the best is CD4URBAN, a list
devoted to the discussion of community
development issues. To subscribe, send an
e-mail message to listproc@u.washing-
ton.edu that reads "subscribe cd4urban"
(don't include the quotes) followed by
your name. Instructions on how to post
messages to the list will be sent to you, and
you'll soon start receiving whatever mes-
sages others might be posting.
Winton Pitcoff is a Brooklyn-based free-
lance writer.
D
ME
-
Fantasy or Real Life
The Giuliani administration s housing preservation plan is a radical departure
from the past. Is there enough money to pull it off? By James Bradley
-
I
t was standing room only in City
Hall's Blue Room on Halloween
afternoon when Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani announced his flfst compre-
hensive housing policy, The chummy ban-
ter among the city officials at the front of
the room set them starkly apart from the
more taciturn housing advocates,
reporters, tenants and others packed inside
the door,
To no one's surprise (the administra-
tion had already tipped off The New York
Times) the mayor said the city was offi-
cially abandoning its practice of seizing
buildings from tax -delinquent landlords
and would instead propose a new slate of
initiatives "designed to keep housing in
responsible private ownership,"
The costs of maintaining and rehabili-
tating housing taken into city ownership,
the mayor said, had been found to be
excessive and "dangerous to the economy,"
Deborah Wright, the commissioner of
Housing Preservation and Development
(HPD), followed the mayor to the micro-
phone. Beyond the rhetoric of cost effi-
ciency, the new housing plan she present-
ed was essentially a preservation blueprint
that redirects funding to publicly
financed, private sector rehabilitation
efforts by for-profit firms, nonprofit orga-
nizations and tenants.
The plan has many housing advocates
skeptical and others hoping it will open new
opportunities for tenant and community
ownership. Either way, while the plan offers
a number of alternatives for ensuring that
buildings never again reach a state of com-
plete decrepitude and abandonment, people
working in affordable housing wonder how
the government will find the resources to
follow through on the proposaL
"Clearly, there are some opportuni-
ties," says Andy Reicher, executive direc-
tor of the Urban Homesteading Assistance
Board (UHAB), a nonprofit that trains ten-
ant associations to manage and purchase
tax-foreclosed buildings. "Instead of
buildings going into city ownership, they
can be turned over to nonprofits or com-
munity groups, and the city would remove
the tax liens and provide the financing,
That's a real commitment." The big hur-
dle, Reicher and others say, is money.
After all, many of the mayor's proposals
have been advocated by previous adminis-
trations.
"This is nothing new," says Reicher.
"We heard the same thing in 1978 when
the city began taking ownership of tax-
delinquent buildings, It's the commitment
of funding and the efficiency of the gov-
ernment that would make this program
work."
And ..... n R.port
In October 1994, the Giuliani adminis-
tration commissioned the consulting firm
Arthur Andersen & Co. to prepare a report
analyzing the cost to the city of owning
and managing its stock of tax-foreclosed,
in rem housing. When it was finally
released at the Halloween press confer-
ence, its findings were clearly designed to
support a privatization approach.
Currently, the city owns and manages
.. - . - ~ ..... -, .. ,,,.-
-
PIPELINE
more than 50,000 apartments in nearly
5,000 occupied and vacant buildings, at a
cost in city and federal funds of more than
$200 million a year, The Andersen report
estimates that it would cost the city $10.6
billion to manage, maintain and rehabili-
tate all of its current in rem housing over
the next 20 years. It also claims that, on
average, vested buildings remain in city
ownership for 19 years, costing taxpayers
roughly $2,2 million per building, (These
numbers raised cries of foul among inde-
pendent housing researchers; they point
out that almost every occupied in rem
building went into city ownership between
1978-only 17 years ago-and 1993, and
thousands of these have been sold off over
the years. Andersen arrived at its exagger-
ated 19-year figure by adding long-aban-
doned commercial properties to the mix.)
In any case, the report concludes that
the city should avoid taking title to proper-
ties altogether, except in extreme cases,
The administration proposes a four-point
strategy:
Implement an "early warning sys-
tem," with which community groups and
HPD will identify buildings in physical
and financial peril. The system would
unify disparate city computer databases
and mobilize resources for on-the-ground
investigations,
Intervene and provide technical and
financial assistance-including low-inter-
est loans-to owners in tax arrears who
have maintenance problems yet appear
responsible enough to pull through with
help. These landlords would also be
allowed to increase rents. Theoretically,
low income tenants would be eligible for
rent subsidies.
In cases where landlords are found to
be negligent or are carrying an insurmount-
able debt load, the city would transfer own-
ership to a nonprofit or for-profit landlord
or the tenants. The tax liens and private
mortgage debts would be wiped off follow-
ing the transfer. In some cases the property
could be taken by the city and managed by
a private company before it is sold.
Finally, the city will package and sell
tax liens it holds on valuable properties
whose owners are expected to eventually
pay back the debt. The liens will be sold to
Wall Street trusts for investment purposes.
On financing and other matters, the
city's housing plan is notably lacking in
specifics. Much of the proposed work is
labor-intensive and expensive. For exam-
CITY LIMITS
pie, the report calls for HPD to devise a
workout strategy for each property in tax
arrears, and to sell foreclosed buildings
within a year along with "necessary incen-
tives." With recent cutbacks at HPD, many
wonder where the city will find the money
and the workforce to complete such a task.
The report offers no cost estimate.
Flexlbl. Approach
"It's going to be very intensive work,"
says Ann Henderson, director of coopera-
tive development at UHAB. "It's true that
every building is different and needs a
flexible approach, but I'm not clear that
[the administration] understands how
much work that will be."
'These buildings are going to have
people living in them who earn $6,800 a
year," adds Harry DeRienzo, chair of the
Task Force on City-Owned Property, a
coalition of community groups and
activists who monitor in rem housing.
DeRienzo points out that rental subsidies
and welfare rent allowances are facing
cuts. "I don't think the city has taken stock
of what it's going to take for people to take
these buildings and run them responsibly
in the absence of a huge amount of public
subsidies. Who's going to be left?
Slumlords and speculators."
Harold Shultz, HPD's deputy commis-
sioner for housing preservation, says the
resources are available, because federal
dollars that currently go into maintaining
in rem buildings will instead be used to
renovate them and keep them private. "To
the extent that we figure to dispose our
properties and reduce the costs of opera-
tions, the [federal Community
Development Block Grant] money can be
redirected toward doing this," he says.
"Even with the existing resources, we
should be able to do a lot more units than
we do under the current program." Still,
Shultz admits the administration has not
come up with an overall price tag.
The city's plan for an early warning
system will rely heavily on Neighborhood
Preservation Consultants-community
groups contracted by the city to organize
tenants, provide legal help in housing
court and mediate conflicts with landlords,
among other things. For years, the consul-
tants program has been hit hard by budget
cuts. City funding has been cut from $4.2
million in 1990 to $2.5 million today.
(Another $800,000 was appropriated by
the City Council and is only now being
DECEMBER 1995
awarded.) There are currently some 45
groups receiving $50,000 a year, down
from 109 groups a year ago. Nevertheless,
the administration expects them, along
with HPD's Small Property Owners
Advocacy Unit and other groups, to be
watchdogs for landlord abuse.
When new contracts between the city
and these groups were awarded earlier in
the year, there was no discussion of this
investigative role, according to Anne
Pasmanick, executive director of the
Community Training and Resource
Center, which works with the consultant
groups. "If that was the plan, then the
groups should have been informed of it,"
she says.
Others in the consultants program
report having received peculiar orders
from HPD. ''We were told not to do any
organizing," says a puzzled Barbara
Schliff' director of housing resources at
Los Sures, a Williamsburg-based group.
"What do they mean by that? I don't know
how they expect a community group to be
effective at stopping housing abandon-
ment without organizing tenants."
Sp.culatlon
Others fear the tax lien sales could lead
to a new round of speculation and aban-
donment. The administration expects the
sales to bring in $72 million in this fiscal
year (a figure the state Financial Control
Board disputes).
"It's a quick-shot solution to get rid of a
potential liability," says Jay Small, execu-
tive director of the Association for
Neighborhood and Housing Development.
If private investors begin seizing liens and
foreclosing property, Small asks, where will
that leave tenants? "It creates a very unclear
situation in terms of who has responsibility
for fixing the building. Who does housing
code enforcement? This is a way of bring-
ing in some quick revenue. It has nothing to
do with stabilizing buildings."
In Nassau County on Long Island,
annual tax lien auctions have been a
bonanza for speculators looking for bar-
gains. Under that system, speculators who
bought tax liens often foreclosed on prop-
erties and evicted people from their
homes, including a much-publicized case
in the 1980s when an elderly woman lost
her home because of an unpaid tax bill of
$92.07. Reforms were implemented in
1986, but abuses continued: a Newsday
investigation in 1990 reported speculators

IIHowdo we
prevent speculation
and fast turnover of
property? How do we
protect tenants?"
still managed to foreclose on homes and
evict tenants.
Giuliani officials insist this will not
happen here. Under the mayor's plan, tax
liens will be sold either individually or in
bulk to institutional investors attracted by
the city's 18 percent interest rate, officials
say. "Those types of investors are usually
only interested in properties [whose own-
ers] are likely to pay their taxes, which is
the kind of tax liens that we wouldn't
mind selling in the private market," says
Shultz. "We would expect [to sell liens
on] commercial properties ... and high-end
residential properties that are not at risk."
Harlem City Council Member C.
Virginia Fields is concerned about
whether sufficient safeguards will be in
place to protect vulnerable tenants. "How
do we prevent speculation and fast
turnover of property?" she asks. "How do
we protect tenants who are buying their
properties through the Tenant Interim
Lease program, who sometimes fall
behind on their taxes? It's not clear how
this is going to proceed."
Tenants in city-owned buildings have
similar fears. ''They're throwing good
money at bad things," says Camelia Flye,
a resident of a city-owned building in
Central Harlem, referring to the possibili-
ty of taxpayer dollars being used to prop
up dubious landlords. Flye fears her
Manhattan Avenue building-on the edge
of several gentrified neighborhoods-
could become an attractive investment.
"Granted, the city often does a lousy job
of running my building," she says. "But
these buildings are still more affordable
than what's outthere. I can't afford $1,000
a month rent, not with four children."
-e
Violence ilI'IOftS children is
not spontaneous. It's learned.
New social research traces
the roots to cOI"ll"lUnities.
Teachers and orsanizers are
takins these lessons into the
streets and sChools.
-
Q ,
and
By Kim Nauer
Walking hOf'rle from school along the bustling corridor of
Pennsylvarua Avenue in East New York, there doesn't seem to be
much of a chance of being assaulted. The light is still bright at 3
p.m. and the streets are ftIled with adults attending to their late
afternoon business.
Even so, kids pull their voices out like box cutters, taking aim
at a new enemy or an old friend who has crossed their thin line of
tolerance. Whether these small altercations end quietly or with
someone in the hospital depends as much on the target as the insti-
gator. On this cold November afternoon, as three girls approach,
the attack begins with a giggling taunt from the leader.
"She got sti-tches!"
Never slowing their gait, the girl and her friends pepper
Maxine,* a 15-year-old steel reed of a girl, with insults and the
promise of a future beating. Maxine keeps walking, her mouth
locked in a thin smile, her gaze fixed on the comer ahead.
"Remember me?" is the last phrase she hears from the encounter
as the barrage fades from earshot. "Remember me. You had bet-
ter remember me .. . "
''They was just talking," Maxine mumbles. "I have a fight with
that girl." It started over nothing, she says. They used to be
friends. But a few weeks ago the two began quarreling. It led to a
shoving match and before Maxine knew it she was in the hospi-
tal, getting four stitches put into her lip.
Obviously, from the apparent pride her nemesis took in this
work, now nearly healed, the fight is not over. But Maxine seems
resigned to a life of sidestepping such incidents. "Every part of
Brooklyn, Queens, the Island-anywhere you go, it's not differ-
ent. Everywhere you go, it's a violent place."
Violence is part of the wash of daily life for kids in East
New York, a 5.6-square-mile patch of Brooklyn with the distinc-
tion in recent years of having one of the city's highest homicide
rates. A survey of 850 sixth, seventh and eighth graders at the East
New York's Intermediate School 302, conducted last January for
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), sought to determine
how prevalent anger and violence are in young people's everyday
lives. The results were stunning.
Thirty-three percent of the children claimed to have "badly
beat" someone in the previous four months. Twenty-six percent
said they had carried a weapon at least once during that period.
Fifteen percent claimed to have threatened someone with a
weapon. Fifteen percent claimed to have robbed someone and 13
percent said they had been arrested.
-
,
CITY LIMITS
If these numbers sound like the bravado of pre-teens talking
tough, the results gathered from an additional 36 pages of psy-
chological testing-designed to ferret out possible motivations for
violent behavior-show something deeper at work. Half of the
students surveyed exhibited symptoms of severe post traumatic
stress syndrome, a relentless cycle of recalling then repressing the
memory of a traumatic incident. Another 27 percent showed mild
to moderate symptoms. Less than a quarter of those surveyed
seemed to be thinking in peace.
The survey, conducted by Mark Spellmann and Gerald
Landsberg at the New York University School of Social Work,
marks the beginning of a push by the CDC to pin down what
works and what doesn't in the untested world of "violence pre-
vention." The researchers are teamed with Manhattan-based
Victim Services to measure how likely it is that victims of vio-
lence will tum to violence themselves and what effect a program
of antiviolence education, counseling and organizing can have on
these children.
Since the early 1980s, educators and social workers have been
experimenting with dozens of different ways to steer children
away from violent behavior. Such efforts-ranging from conflict
resolution curriculums to intensive parent counseling-have
received warm media attention but little in the way of scientific
scrutiny.
That has changed with the rising teenage homicide numbers.
Today, says CDC spokeswoman Mary Ann Fenley, murder is the
second leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds behind the
long-time leader, car accidents, and gaining fast. While it's impor-
tant to continue fmding better criminal justice solutions, she says,
the problem will not be solved until policy makers find some way
to prevent future generations from turning to violence. "We need
to be able to give the nation some hope that these projects are
going to make a difference."
F or SOCial scientists and biologists, the goal of violence
research is to define the roots of motivation. Why does a shove in
the hallway cause one child to shove back and another to simply
apologize?
Some argue, controversially, that heredity shapes brain chem-
istry and therefore plays an important role in how angry or aggres-
sive a person is. More in the mainstream are physiologists who
study both behavior and brain chemistry. They maintain that trau-
matic childhood experiences, such as physical abuse, can chemi-
cally alter how the brain reacts to stressful situations. And there
are also psychiatrists and others who note that a child's tempera-
ment is likely shaped by a number of factors including their innate
fortitude, the emotional support they receive from adults and the
stress they endure in their daily lives.
"It's not [that) some children are born aggressive," says Karen
Bierman, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University. "But if
you take children and place them in settings where there are high
rates of contlict and threat and hostility, their bodies will react to
living in that sort of environment."
That is not to say, however, that emotional reactions are
inevitably hard-wired early in life. Bierman maintains that any
child, given enough help at a young age, can learn how to rein in
DECEMBER 1995
his or her own aggressive impulses.
On this, most violence prevention
researchers can agree. But what is the right
age to offer help? Intervene too early and
some children may feel stigmatized; too
late, children may shun the attention. In
school-based programs, should only the
most troubled youngsters be targeted or is
it more useful to include whole class-
rooms? How important is counseling as
opposed to simple instruction? Can any
program work without the support of the
family? And what combination of strate-
gies will help the most children at the low-
est cost?
Bierman is now evaluating an elemen-
tary school-based program in rural
Pennsylvania that provides conflict resolu-
tion training for all children starting in
kindergarten. Parents of children who still
exhibit behavioral problems in first grade
are encouraged to enroll themselves in
counseling classes while keeping their
child in a program of weekly counseling,
academic tutoring and social-skill building
"friendship groups." Counselors and tutors
also make home visits in some cases.
Children who fail to shake off aggression
problems in their earliest years may con-
tinue to use the services as they advance
through elementary school, but most of the
children reportedly succeed early in over-
coming hostile impulses.
The program, funded by three federal
research grants, has brought an unprece-
dented level of calm to the classroom,
Bierman says. But the federal support is
only for the experiment, and it's unclear
whether local taxpayers will be willing to
eventually foot the bill for what are,
admittedly, expensive counseling services.
"Does the data really demonstrate that this
is cost effective in the long run? Will you,
in fact , save money on more expensive
services from special ed to probation?" No
one yet knows, she says. It is still too early
to tell .
Victi", Services' Linda
Lausell is willing to talk about costs-the
costs of living dangerously. They are high,
she says, and children pay the price.
Across the nation, health statistics show
increasing levels of youth depression, sui-
cide and, as the East New York survey
shows, post traumatic stress syndrome.
-
As program director for an agency that
made its name serving crime victims and
battered women, it's not surprising that
Lausell 's theories on violence prevention
dwell on the corrosive effects of trauma
and fear. Children who live in fear of
being hurt or killed, she argues, are the
ones most likely to lash out themselves.
It's an old theory, she admits. Johnny,
abused by his dad, grows up to abuse his
son. But breaking the cycle takes on new
significance when Johnny, abused by his dad,
can go out and get a gun.
"We keep seeing this over and over
again," Lausell says. "Often there is a whole
history of victimization, starting in the home,
coupled with what's going on in the commu-
nity, coupled with what's going on in school.
"They end up trying to cope with victim-
ization the best way they know how, trying to
regain the power that's been lost and trying to
defend against the fear. They do that by iden-
tifying with the aggressor and trying to hurt
before they get hurt."
In the first phase of the CDC study, New
York University's Spellmann and Landsberg
tested Lausell's victimization theory, seeking
to determine which kinds of victimization
were most likely to spur a child to violence.
U sing social science statistical standards,
which allow for the fact that dozens of factors
can influence a personal decision, the surveys
revealed that prior victimization is indeed
strongly associated with acts of violent
behavior. Predictably, being attacked in
school, on the way home from school and at
home were all linked to subsequent violent
behavior.
Yet in their research, the biggest cause
associated with violent behavior was not hav-
ing been personally abused or victimized, but
rather simply hearing about or seeing acts of
violence committed against others in the
neighborhood. In other words, you don't nec-
essarily have to be a direct victim of violence
to become a victimizer. It's enough to simply
live in a wider environment where violence is
part of life.
Lausell did not have the benefit of NYU's
study when she was designing the East New
York program. Still, she notes, the data con-
fmn her belief that any program should
include all the children in a class (rather than
only those who may be deemed "violent")
and needs ultimately to include families and
the entire community.
New York City is also home to one of the
IIThey end up
trying to cope
with victimiza-
tion the best
way they know
how, trying to
regain the
power that's
been lost and
trying to
defend against
the fear."
country's original and most well-respected
school-based conflict resolution programs,
the lO-year-old Resolving Conflicts
Creatively Program, which offers teachers
throughout the city a comprehensive
antiviolence curriculum for classroom use.
It has received widespread and much-
iii deserved attention in the media for its suc-
i1:
iij cess developing peer training, coping and
~ leadership skills for students growing up
in urban neighborhoods. The Victim
Services program in East New York, howev-
er, has set out to take antiviolence work to
another level by going beyond the classroom,
into counseling and community organizing.
In both of East New York's junior high
schools-IS 302 and IS 292-Victim
Services offers classes in how to avoid con-
frontation and cope with the violence that
touches their Jives. They also have full-time
adult counselors staffing a "safe harbor" room
in each school. Students are encouraged to
use these rooms in their free time and are told
they can visit any time if there is a crisis.
Finally, counselors at IS 302 have begun
to convince students to help out with a com-
munity-wide antiviolence campaign coordi-
nated by New York City's Department of
Health and United Community Centers.
Students have chosen which posters would be
most appropriate for their classmates and, in
November, helped bring out an estimated 75
kids to a Friday night candlelight vigil.
Community organizing, Lausell says, is a crit-
ical part of helping kids move firmly away
from the temptation of violence. "Speaking
out against something, becoming active in a
movement, is very healing and therapeutic,"
she says. ''This is not just patching them up so
that we make better cripples out of them.
They have something to contribute toward
change."
InttfTYltdiatt School 292 was
built in the 1960s, before short hallways and
long banks of windows were considered a
security liability. The low glass panes, all too
vulnerable to young fists, drive Principal Levi
Brisbane crazy. "You don' t build buildings
like this anymore," he grouses. But Victor
Hall likes the windows and the courtyard
below. A trim 39-year-old with an imposing
Van Dyke and a penchant for dark blue blaz-
ers, Hall could be confused for a principal,
were it not for his flashy ties and sympathy
for day-dreamers. He admits it: "I like to look
CITY LIMITS
Ifs an old theory: Johnny, abused by his dad,
grows up to abuse his son. But breaking the
cycle takes on new significance when Johnny,
abused by his dad, can go out and get a gun.
at the trees."
Hall can afford the pleasure. As the school's "safe harbor"
room counselor, he is associated with class games and lunch time
recess. It is Principal Brisbane who has to worry about safely
shepherding more than 1,000 kids through class each day.
According to other staff members, Brisbane inherited a school
in chaos five years ago. Guidance counselors talk about days in
the late 1980s when groups of students would gang up against
each other, declaring allegiance depending on which side of
Pennsylvania Avenue they happened to live. High school students
from nearby Maxwell and Thomas Jefferson High Schools would
stubbornly hang out in front of the school. Weapons like knives,
box cutters and razor blades surfaced intermittently and, at a par-
ticularly low point, one student was caught with a gun. Both kids
and teachers alike chafed under the traditional academic regime
of the former principal.
Brisbane divided students and staff into four easier-to-manage
mini-schools, loosely tailored to the students' career ambitions.
Working with a community task force, he stepped up security,
issuing school identification cards, instituting random once-a-
week metal detector inspections and working with the local police
to keep the area around the school clear. But he says it has been
the Victim Services program, now in its fifth year here, that has
provided the school with a much needed steam-release valve.
"I've seen students here get into a fight because they were
bumped. I tell them, you wouldn't be able to ride the subways in
New York if you had a combative attitude toward everyone who
bumped you-you'd be fighting all the way." He chuckles. "How
does a child react? You have to train them."
This is one of Hall's jobs. He backs up a core group of staff
and teachers trained in conflict resolution who spot growing feuds
early and make students sit down and talk out their differences.
By early November, reports Guidance Counselor Mary Ann
Greene, her office alone had held 120 mediation sessions.
Students training to be peer mediation counselors meet in an after-
school club called "Generation NeXt."
After three months on the job here, Hall is enjoying the atten-
tions of candid and occasionally worshipful youngsters. It's a long
way from his previou& three years working at two different high
schools in Manhattan and the South Bronx. There, he said, many
students had built emotional walls around themselves that
required Herculean strength to scale. While this is not as true of
junior high school students, he says many are slipping away from
adult influence. That, Hall says, is because adults frequently make
the mistake of dismissing young people's problems as trivial.
Take the common enough predicament of "He said, she said"
DECEMBER 1995
conflicts. In every school there is an undercurrent of gossip that
roils the hallways, misconstruing innocent phrases, breaking up
old alliances and creating new ones sometimes bent on physical
revenge. Violence counselors, Halls says, don't ignore it.
"When you hear it through the grapevine, things change,"
explains Aisha, a student hanging out in the safe room one recent
afternoon. 'They'll be Like, 'I don't Like Aisha's attitude.'
'Then it will be, 'She said she don't Like Aisha's attitude and
she wants to fight her.'
'Then it will pass down, 'She don't like Aisha's attitude, she
wants to fight her, and, yea, she said that she'll beat her up.'
"And by the time it gets to you, it will be 'She don't like
Students in East
New York were
given cameras and
asked to talk
about a violent
incident in their
lives. These are
their pictures and
comments.
-
Aisha's attitude, she says she wants to
fight her, she'll beat her up, and she'll take
her any time, any place.' That's how it
usually is, and in my experience, I know. I
was recently involved in gossip and it
almost got us all in big trouble."
The big trouble was a classroom brawl
that could have landed Aisha and her
friends on the suspension list. Instead,
administrators took mercy and funneled
the crowd into Hall's safe harbor room. He
took one look at the situation, particularly at Aisha, who is a nat-
ural leader, and started the "Trendsetters Club." Now Aisha and
her friends-presciently placed in the junior high's fourth floor
Law and Government mini-school-are running an anti-gossip
campaign.
"Now on the fourth floor it's a big thing," Aisha insists.
"Everybody's saying, I don't want to hear the gossip. Really! On
our floor, you still see everybody running around the lunchroom,
but you don't see fights. It's helped a lot."
In the back of Room 312, an old art room stocked with
high-energy games like Nerf hoop and table hockey, a poem
called 'The Mask" is taped above Hall's desk. It begins: 'The
lIlt always comes
down to listening to
their other choices.
What choices, beside
the violent ones, could
they hove mode?"
a.,
mask hides all my fearsffhe mask covers
all my tearsffhe mask keeps people from
seeingffhe torment which is my being."
Although many of the kids he sees leap
into the room ready to tease and laugh,
Hall's biggest job is dealing with masks.
Steadily, throughout the day, more somber
kids arrive, heading back to Hall's desk
where he has created a private comer
behind a stack of old bookcases.
= Around noon on a raw mid-November
~ day, Leo arrives, his face screwed up in
~ anger. He waits pensively as Hall sets up a
couple of other kids with a game of ring-
toss and then takes him to the back for a quiet conference. When
Hall stops to deal with shouting in the hallway, Leo's head pops
up from behind the bookcases. His expression, for a moment sim-
ply curious, tightens up again as he spies Nathaniel sitting across
the room. The boy had called Leo a jerk IO minutes earlier.
Leo walks over and stands above Nathaniel.
"I'm in your face," he says.
Nathaniel, more than a head taller, stands up.
"No. I'm in your face."
Hall quickly strides over. With one glare he stops the fight,
cold. Leo shirks back to the comer, his expression stony. "Jerk,"
Nathaniel reaffirms, turning back to the table.
An articulate eighth grader with a strict upbringing by his
grandmother, Nathaniel complains he has to deal with too many
CITY LIMITS
"ignorant" kids like Leo in this school. They travel in crowds and
dominate the cafeteria, he says, intimidating those who simply
want to eat their lunch. When it's pointed out that he did not need
to call Leo a "jerk" to his face, Nathaniel replies, "It's better to
fight with your mouth than your hands."
His table hockey partner, a little sprite of a sixth grade girl,
interrupts. "I wouldn't have stood up to him. I would have
walked away."
"One of these days you're going to have to stand up and
defend yourself," Nathaniel fires back.
Counseling kids this age requires a soft sell. Hall has to tra-
verse a thicket of differing values and needs.
He has set aside Tuesdays and Thursdays for the school's
youngest students, the sixth graders. They are still impression-
able, he feels, and he has made it his mission to get to know each
one of them in hopes of creating allies for the next two years. His
work among seventh and eighth graders relies more on temptation
(an open playroom stocked with games, devoid of teachers) and
salvation (he can save an accused child from suspension). Happy
students get his bemused but distracted attention. The distraught
get long private conferences and, in the most serious cases, a
closed door session with the room to themselves.
One thing is obvious watching the comings and goings in the
safe harbor room. It is often filled with students ducking away
from the gaze of their more aggressive peers in the hallways. The
question is inevitable: is Hall reaching those kids with the great-
est potential to become violent, or just those students seeking to
avoid them?
Hall answers that two ways. First of all, the teachers and
administrators gladly make a practice of sending the school's agi-
tators his way. He estimates that helping deeply troubled children
takes up more than half of his time. So yes, he says, many of the
children with the greatest potential for violence do come his way.
As to whether he can influence them, he looks back to his
childhood and who reached him. Raised on Kelly Street in the
South Bronx, he was steeped in a culture of violence. At 11, he
says, he watched as a man standing less than a yard from him
crumpled under bullet fire. "Our heroes were the guys out there
doing it. If you were in the street that we played on, those were the
guys who had the status. I have seen people get shot. I have seen
people get stabbed."
Hall adds that he also had a strong family that held him close
and, he says, saved him from a sorry fate. Many of his students are
nor so lucky, he says, so he does not emphasize the family con-
nection. Instead he trusts his own connection and that of other
adults and students will make a difference. It's a question of get-
ting enough energy focused on preventing violence and building
support structures for young people.
When Hall tells kids about his own violent past, they often ask
how he managed to end up here, teaching.
"Were you in jail?" one child guessed. No, he tells him.
"Were you arrested?" -the child guesses again. No, Hall says.
He says he must occasionally remind children that prison stays are
not the only way of escaping from a violent neighborhood alive.
No fTlatttr what the results of the NYU study, scheduled
for completion in 1998, the real measure of Victim Services'
success will lie in the youth violence statistics, says Roger
DECEMBER 1995
Hayes, director of the city Health Department's Injury
Prevention Program.
"One of the criticisms has been, do we really know if this stuff
works? There has certainly been a lot of strong anecdotal data
from people in schools saying that it's really changed the environ-
ment of the schools. It's reduced fighting in the lunchroom and the
hallways. But the big question still remains: Does it reduce more
serious violence?
"Kids will tell you in surveys and conversations that they're
more afraid going to and from school than while they are actual-
ly in school," he observes. "Hopefully, if we can build on this,
from the school into the community, we can gradually have some
effect."
An antiviolence public health army is going to have to be built
one person at a time, says Hall. He tells his charges that he kept
himself out of trouble as a teenager because he deliberately chose
one road over another. "I wanted to go to school. I wanted to do
well in school. I just made different choices than everybody else
was making." And then, he says, he sits and waits until the chil-
dren start telling their own stories. Hall explains to them that
anger or sadness or whatever they feel is OK. But there are better
ways than fighting to work it off.
"It always comes down to listening to their other choices,"
Hall says. "What choices, besides the violent ones, could they
have made? We try to help them see that violence is not the way
to get by .... Maybe in your neighborhood it's how everybody is
doing it, but it's not the only way."

if
n May 29, 1994, 35-year-old Jay Sharav
died of neuroleptic malignant syn-
drome, a fatal reaction to medication
prescribed for his mental illness. He had
a history of psychiatric problems dating
back to high school, and at the time of
his death he had been living for two and a half years in a support-
ive residence run by Community Access, a Lower East Side non-
profit that provides housing and support services for people with
psychiatric disabilities who have been homeless or in institutions.
Community Access is an agency with a particular emphasis on
self-help and community living for the mentally ill, and a vision
of its clients as providers of support, empowerment and choice for
others in situations similar to their own.
In August 1995, the New York State Commission on Quality
of Care for the Mentally Disabled, an independent board appoint-
ed by the governor, published a 4O-page report on Sharav's death
entitled "In the Matter of Jacob Gordon" (Jacob Gordon is a pseu-
donym used by the commission. More recently, Sharav's family
has spoken out publicly about the circumstances surrounding their
A YOUNG MAN'S
DEATH ON THE

LOWER EAST SIDE
PLACES THE DEBATE
OVER FREEDOM

OF CHOICE FOR THE

MENTALLY DISABLED
ONTO THE

PUBLIC STAGE.
son's death and is no longer protecting his identity). The report
chronicled Sharav's long journey through mental health services
and documented how that system failed to prevent his death.
It also indicted Community Access for its failure to do every-
thing possible to make certain Jay Sharav took his medication on
time and in the right doses, rather than allowing him the leeway to
make his own choice about what to put into his body.
The report's criticisms have driven a thorn into some old and
open wounds, exposing the antagonism that men and women
fighting for the rights of consumers of mental health care to con-
trol their own lives feel towards those who advocate traditional,
sometimes coercive forms of treatment. Men and women in the
consumer rights movement charge that by laying blame for
Sharav's death on Community Access, the commission is blaming
the self-help philosophy Community Access promotes.
"Community Access is at the cutting edge of consumer
empowerment," says Clive Burnett, a peer specialist coordinator
at the organization who is himself recovering from mental illness.
''The report was an attack on the progress they have made. It was
an attempt to stop them in their tracks."
E

err
here is a burgeoning movement of newly empowered
consumers of mental health services taking control
of their treatment and coming into increasingly fre-
quent conflict with the traditional mental health care
system. Many of them regard the system of hospitals and profes-
sional psychiatrists, social workers and therapists with hostility
and resentment; they say they spend as much or more time in
recovery from institutionalized treatment methods as from their
illnesses. And they say the system often treats them as children
rather than consenting adults.
These men and women have formed self-help groups that raise
critical questions about mental health services: When is care help-
ful, and when is it controlling? And can a system that is so mis-
trusted by the people it seeks to serve offer any significant help
toward recovery if its clients have little power and control over
their own care?
Few mentally disabled men and women are committed to life-
long institutionalization anymore. Even so, the alternative to state
hospitals--community-based rehabilitation and support ser-
vices-remain far from adequate given the number of people who
need them, despite years of lobbying by advocates, parents and
consumers.
It is in this context of an overstressed system that the self-help
CITY LIMITS
groups wage their campaign for greater personal control. And the
Sharav case has crystallized that conflict.
The state commission's report on Sharav's death acknowl-
edges that "deinstitutionalization efforts and community-based
mental health service developments over the past several decades
offered Mr. [Sharav] an alternative."
It continues: "His is the story of how well [i.e. poorly] the ser-
vice system responds to the challenge presented by persons with
mental illness who disagree with the recommendations for treat-
ment and refuse to follow the advice of clinical professionals ....
He lived in filth and neglected his basic hygiene needs ... . Often he
did not receive his medications as prescribed .... Following Mr.
[Sharav's] death, approximately 70 tablets of what appeared to be
Clozaril were found in his clothing ....
"Like many individuals with serious mental illness, he was
put off by things which tended to identify or label him as being
mentally ill: he disliked taking medications, having to attend pro-
grams geared exclusively to mentally ill people, living with other
mentally disabled adults, and keeping appointments with psychi-
atrists, therapists and case managers."
The description gives only part of the picture, however. Sharav
was also a respected musician and a good student. Not long before
his death, he received his college degree, despite more than 15
years of struggling with his disability.
In its own written response to the report, Community Access
took a view diametrically opposed to the commission, laying the
blame for Sharav's refusal to take better care of himself squarely
in the lap of the traditional mental health care system.
DECEMBER 1995
'The breakdown occurred months and years before [Sharav]
arrived at Community Access, when an array of programs, agen-
cies and individuals became involved in his life without his active
participation," wrote executive director Steve Coe. "[Sharav] had
no 'ownership' of this system, resisted involvement in it and
because of this, what should have been minor health issues were
left unattended and escalated into life-threatening conditions .....
"We do not believe it is the proper role of community-based,
voluntary agencies to coerce people into taking medication to sat-
isfy a treatment plan. We will never condone this practice. Our
medication monitoring system . ..is not a policing function."
In an interview, Coe elaborates: "When you don't force people
to do something, they are more likely to do it," he says. "People
should have a choice on their medication." If they are given
enough information and support to make a decision on their own,
they will have a stake in the result of their choice, he adds. "You
convince people [to take care of themselves] by showing them
their behavior has consequences."
1r
his is a point of view espoused by many on the
receiving end of the mental health system, not least
among the scores of men and women who have
made their homes at Community Access.
Kevin Childs is a 40-year-old who suffers from epilepsy and
has had to take barbiturates since he was 12 years old. He has been
homeless and spent two years meeting the mailman outside his
old residence to intercept his federal disability checks. He's been
in prison, injected heroin, thrown himself out of a fourth floor
J.J. Burns (left)
spent time in
acute psychiatric
hospitals and slept
in Tompkins
Square Park. Kevin
Childs (right) has
been homeless
and labeled
schizoid and anti-
social. Today they
are well into
recovery and
advocate con-
sumer control of
the mental health
system.
Wi
window, been handcuffed to wheelchairs and wheeled before psy-
chiatrists who have prescribed medication, suggested institution-
alization and offered him a number of labels (schizoid, antisocial
personality disorder, conduct disorder). But for the last six years
he's been clean and making his meetings.
Today he lives in a studio in Gouverneur Court, a semi-sup-
portive SRO run by Community Access on the Lower East Side.
Copies of Camus, Marx and "Treating the Homeless Mentally Ill"
are scattered around his room. He debates mental health policy on
an Internet listserv and he was just offered a $23,OOO-a-year job as
communications coordinator for Club Access, a psychosocial club
for men and women with psychiatric disabilities run by
Community Access at Avenue C and East 6th Street.
Childs is vehemently opposed to the mental health system tak-
ing anything other than an advisory role in community-based care.
Rather, self-help groups and peer support networks should be the
primary resource for recovery, he says.
He says there are a small number of professionals that he's got-
ten along with, yet most of his experiences with their system have
been negative: "[They] want to believe the person can't do it by
himself, the person's crazy. They expect you to do everything by
the book so you wind up in a little SRO with a case manager and
that's your life. [With a professional it's] 'Hey, fIfty minutes are
up Jack, see ya. Try and remember where we' re at for next week. '
"Most of the consumers I speak with, basically we laugh at the
professionals."
What's taken their place in Childs' life are 12-step groups like
Double Trouble for dually diagnosed (substance abuse and men-
tal illness) men and women. He also connects with peer special-
ists through a wide information network of consumers trading
coping skills with one another and exchanging information on
new medication. He says he has gotten a sense of community
from the life on the sidewalks outside Club Access, and from the
"Crazy and Proud" bulletin board service and the "Madness
Homepage" on the World Wide Web.
1.1. Burns is 42 years old. He used to sleep in Tompkins Square
Park, battled a cocaine habit, and has been diagnosed as having
traits of schizophrenia, for which he currently takes medication.
He also lives in Gouverneur Court and has been involved with
Community Access since 1990. Burns has spent time in acute
psychiatric hospitals where he asked every day to get out, put
together pens as vocational therapy, "walked around in pajamas
trying to get a cigarette," and said he thought he knew how the
staff felt about him: "Just another sick person, another sick person
jumping in their face, blaming them for being there."
He accepts the fact that he needs medication and that he's sick.
But he doesn't want that to defIne his life. He needs a doctor just
to prescribe medication, he says, but he has no need for "paid pro-
fessionals" with whom he has nothing in common and who never
spent enough time to get to know him, who would walk out of the
room during a session if he raised his voice and who would phys-
ically restrain him to give him an injection when they thought he
was going to be violent.
Bums and Childs are part of a national movement. One of the
men responsible for the movement's rapid growth in recent years
is Dr. Edward Knight, who recovered from a severe mental dis-
ability and in 1988 founded the Mental Health Empowerment
Project, which has since spawned approximately 400 self-help
groups in New York State. Knight says that many professional
services treat people in the mental health system as if they were
hopeless, as if they needed to be baby-sat, as if they were crazy
and not worth listening to.
"Many community housing programs force people into mean-
ingless day programs," Knight says. "The day is spent in doing
nothing which builds skills, real skills. Instead the latest ' social-
ization skills' of some psychologist who has little understanding
of life in the streets are taught. These are infantilizing courses on
how to hold conversations taught to people who have held con-
versations for years."
Howard Vogel, who's had 14 years of recovery and who went
to work at Kings County Hospital-the same hospital where he
was once tied to a bed- as an intern social worker, now holds an
Master's degree in social work and is on the Community Access
staff, coordinating the Double Trouble program. Vogel is more
blunt in his assessment of hospital care and what it does and does-
n't do for a consumer: "You're sort of corralled like an animal in
a cage. You're fed, you have a place to sleep and a place to bathe.
You're mistreated emotionally, psychologically as well as spiritu-
ally .... You are not treated as a person."
il
f it had not been for the Quality of Care Commission's
report, the Sharav case would have been an unlikely can-
didate for driving a wedge between camps in the mental
health community. Because he died of a severe and
uncommon reaction to psychiatric drugs, medical practitioners
familiar with the incident say the circumstances of his death prob-
ably had less to do with treatment philosophies than with human
physiology, bad luck and a failure to get him to an emergency
room in time.
As the report makes clear, Jay Sharav had a history of extraor-
dinary sensitivity to psychiatric drugs. In the days before he died,
he repeatedly told his case manager that he felt depressed and very
ill. The case manager took Sharav to see his private psychiatrist, a
practitioner hired by Sharav's parents who had prescribed antide-
pressant and neurotropic drugs. The doctor met with Sharav, said
he seemed to be his usual self and sent him home. Two days later
the young man was found barely conscious in the hallway outside
his apartment. He was rushed to a hospital, where he died.
Yet the commission's report left the psychiatrist, the tradition-
al medical establishment and its institutions virtually blameless,
not only for the man's death but also for the years of constantly
changing drug therapies and other treatments over which Sharav
reportedly had little control. The latter may have prompted his
habitual unwillingness to take medication, according to consumer
advocates.
"My most overwhelming reaction to the report was an absolute
fury," says Mary Auslander, New York City recipient affairs direc-
tor for the state Office of Mental Health. Auslander is a longtime
activist for consumer rights and a social worker who herself
recovered from severe psychiatric disabilities. "They went after
UIT is NOT THE PROPER ROLE OF COMMUNiTY-BASED,
VOLUNTARY AGENCiES TO COERCE PEOPLE iNTO TAKiNG
MEDiCATiON TO SATiSFY A TREATMENT PLAN."
Z'
CITY LIMITS
USELF-HELP BY iTSELF is NO BETTER THAN MEDiciNE BY
iTSELF. BUT I THiNK ANYBODY CAN BE EDUCATED ENOUGH
TO NEGOTiATE WHAT is THEiR BEST TREATMENT."
people in the public sector because that's who they could go after.
It was absolutely unconscionable."
In the end, the commission's report and the ensuing debate has
had little negative impact on Community Access' operations. With
the help of the organization's vocal cadre of consumers and
employees, word went out across the Internet and around the
Lower East Side that the group was under intense scrutiny. People
rallied in support.
Coe says the organization has changed a few internal systems
since the death, improving the tracking of clients' medication and
revising emergency procedures.
He says his greatest regret in the case, however, is that he didn' t
intervene more forcefully as an advocate for Sharav, helping him
become better educated about his choices and assisting him in
gaining greater control over his psychiatric care. That, he says,
would have been the only way to ensure that Sharav felt he had a
stake in taking his medication or in getting whatever other help he
needed.
Clarence J. Sundram is chairman of the Commission on the
Quality of Care. He says he has been wrestling with the question
of consumer choice since he joined the board upon its founding in
1978. He says he feels it is the commission's role to make sure
providers recognize their responsibility to protect their clients,
even if at times that means going against the notion of free choice.
"The reason there is a mental health system, the reason that the
state invests four billion dollars a year providing services for peo-
ple with mental illness, is that some segment of this population at
some point in their life does function with impaired decision-mak-
ing capacity," Sundram says. "That's why you have involuntary
commitment clauses, that's why you have hospitals, that's why
you have locked wards and forensic programs. You can't have a
model of absolute choice where you respect every decision of
every person all the time .... If you do that, you are in the position
of saying that you respect the choice of somebody who, in a psy-
chotic state, wants to commit suicide and you stand by and let
them do it because that's their choice."
In any case, Community Access is regulated by the state Office
of Mental Health, not the commission. State officials say they are
unlikely to make any kind of move against the community orga-
nization. Darby Penney, director of recipient affairs at OMH, says
the state agency "is way ahead of the commission" in terms of
promoting consumer rights.
Penney, Auslander, Coe and many of the consumer activists
agree that there are limits to choice; the point is education, self-
help and networking with peers. ''There's never one thing that
helps people, " Auslander says. "Self-help by itself is no better
than medicine by itself. But I think anybody can be educated
enough to negotiate what is their best treatment."
Recently published research makes a powerful case for the
idea that peer support and strong community services are not only
effective in helping mentally disabled men and women cope in
society, but have also led to a high rate of significant improvement
and recovery. About two-thirds of 269 men and women deinstitu-
tionalized during the late 1950s in Vermont into a comprehensive
program of rehabilitation and supportive community services-
including peer support groups-went on to live productive lives
DECEMBER 1995
and hold jobs. Many were completely off medication when they
were interviewed in the early 1980s. In a study just published in
the British Journal of Psychiatry and written by Michael DeSisto,
former director of Maine's Bureau of Mental Health, and
Courtenay Harding of the University of Colorado Medical
School, a parallel group of deinstitutionalized patients in Augusta,
Maine was found to have fared far worse. This group had very few
rehabilitative services or supports.
Indeed, in many ways the latter group is not unlike the thou-
sands of New York mental hospital patients who have been dein-
stitutionalized and left to fend for themselves on the streets in the
1970s, ' 80s and '90s.
I]]
nder the New York State Community Reinvest-
ment Act passed in 1993 and sponsored by then-
Assemblyman George Pataki, money saved from
the downsizing and closure of hospitals was to be
channeled to community programs; it is now threatened by dras-
tic budget cuts. Meanwhile the general public remains fearful
(imagining every schizophrenic a potential Larry Hogue, the
"Wild Man of 96th Street") of having the psychiatrically disabled,
especially if they're homeless and substance abusing, show up in
their neighborhood.
"People are just throwing up their hands. These are the people
that used to be the 100,000 men and women locked up in state
facilities; that number is now down to 9,000," says Mark Hurwitz,
director of the Mental Health Project at the Urban Justice Center,
which advocates for the homeless, among others. "Society and
New York State have not come up with a solution for those peo-
ple .. . the hard core people ... the people who are not dangerous
enough to be locked up but have been so damaged by the system
that they refuse all help."
Ed Knight argues that current resources are still inadequate to
provide the kind of self-help networks and services that most pe0-
ple need in order to recover. If these are continually denied
because of a lack of will in government to provide funding or
because professionals feel threatened by self-help, he says, "these
people and people like them will leave demeaning programs and
live in the streets once again, even if court orders try vainly to
keep them [in the program]."
Out in front of the storefront at Club Access on Avenue C,
Kevin Childs says that the consumer rights movement and the
self-help groups it spawned probably saved his life or at least con-
vinced him that it was worth saving. Through meeting after meet-
ing, the support of ex-recipient providers like Howie Vogel, the
social network of the clubhouse environment and the process of
engaging his problems, his treatment and his recovery, he found
stability. Through it all, he couldn't teU his psychiatrist that he was
troubled by his own thoughts (certain he would be labeled schiz-
ophrenic), or that he sometimes felt like killing himself (he'd be
given medication or put away). He says it was by avoiding these
traditional treatments that he's straightened himself out.
Of Community Access, Vogel says that in contrast to the whole
system of clinics, state hospitals, psychiatric wards, correctional
facilities, institutions, "people here, they come and they live. This
is a life, this is a community."
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CITY LIMITS
A
brother in motion tends to stay in motion. And
Brother Ed Phelan is moving, driving through the
wet streets behind Yankee Stadium, which squats in
the winter rain like a dimwitted cow. "I'm really not
much of a Yankees fan, especially after my experiences with
them," he says, slowly speeding up the big red church van.
Phelan, executive director of the Highbridge Community
Life Center, lives in the land behind the right field wall.
Highbridge, where one Yankees exec described children hang-
ing from the schoolyard rims like gibbons, can do without The
Boss. Losing The Brother, that's another story.
"Ten, twelve years ago this place was all empty lots and
abandoned buildings," says Phelan, a former Catholic school
principal who took the vows of the de la Salle Christian
Brothers, an order devoted to education, in 1968. 'There were
lots of fires. The 44th Precinct was number one in murders.
People were getting out as fast as they could."
But then government-sponsored
nonprofit agencies renovated some
.. - . - ~ - ~ ....... -
NOTORIOUS
5,000 units of housing, adding 15,000 new residents. Although
Phelan's organization never rehabbed a single apartment, it
played an indispensable role in rebuilding the community
from within.
Under Phelan, HCLC has expanded into a catch-all com-
munity assistance agency whose services include support
groups for families and HIV-positive women; a mobile soup
kitchen; a job bank; a storefront drop-in center; a huge adult
education program and a produce farm upstate in Goshen. This
year the budget is $2 million.
One reason for HCLC's success is that the 55-year-old
Phelan has become one of the best proposal writers and
fundraisers in town. He may have the too-skinny, too-trustwor-
thy look of a CYO track coach, but Brother Ed possesses a
Ponzi-scheme brain. "You've got to know the little tricks, like
Brother's a Keeper
how to quadruple a Child Welfare Agency grant
just by tapping the state's matching grant pro-
gram," he says.
He has a PhD, but Phelan-son of a Brooklyn
By Glenn Thrush
DECEMBER 1995
cop-has always loved the streets. In 1986, after
training to be an emergency
medical technician, he arrived
at the scene of the infamous
Howard Beach racial assault.
In the ambulance to Jamaica
Hospital, Cedric Sandiford,
whose friend Michael Griffith
had been chased into a car's
path and killed, told Phelan he
had been harshly handled by
police. 'Thanks for being the
only one who didn't treat me
like a criminal," he said.
Brother Ed's works have
never received similar apprecia-
tion from George Steinbrenner.
Last year, Phelan applied for
one of the few grants the
Yankees bestow on neighbor-
hood organizations. HCLC's
$31,000 request was shot down.
Then there was the time in
the 1980's when Phelim
requested a special dispensa-
tion of caps, bats and balls for
neighborhood kids.
"The guy over at the
Stadium told me they'd get
back to me," Brother Ed
recalls. "So you know what I
did? I called the Mets. They
said 'Come on over and pick up
what you need!'"
.,
November 1995
$18.1 Billion
CHEMICAL BANKING
CORPORATION
and
THE CHASE MANHATTAN
CORPORATION

In
Consultation with 370 community
organizations and government officials
announce the
"New CHASE" COMMUNITY
INVESTMENT COMMITMENT
the largest commitment of
its kind ever made
A Five-Year Targeted Commitment including loans and investments for affordable housing and commercial
development; loans and investments to assist small business and community-based nonprofit organizations;
affordable mortgages; major philanthropic initiatives and contributions; a new philanthropic initiative aimed
at employment issues facing low- and moderate-income individuals; technical assistance for nonprofits and
expansion of banking services in low- and moderate-income communities.
o CHASE

j:1 CITY LIMITS
"I've Got the Light of Freedom: The
Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi
Freedom Struggle" by Charles M. Payne,
University of California Press, 1995, 504
pages, $28 hardcover.
We are living in a period of great anger, confronted with a
political mood in this country that borders on hysteria and with
frenetic energy directed against the poor, immigrants, and any-
one of color on public assistance.
Those with a conscience and a predilection to do something
have held meetings and worked on actions. In New York City,
groups of all kinds are grappling with how best to respond to the
War on the Poor. Almost universally, they are borrowing from
tactics developed over the course of the civil rights movement:
demonstrations, marches, civil disruption and street theater.
This is not surprising, given that the movement is the only
model for change our generation has to refer to with some sense
of experience. But given the stakes, it's important to ask why
Amzie Moore helped start the Regional
Council of Negro Leadership in 1951. This
organization engaged in voter registration drives,
boycotts of segregated businesses, demands for
equal pay for teachers and more. Septima Clark
established Citizenship Schools, designed to pre-
pare black people to register to vote, which were
eventually expanded throughout the South. Then
there was Myles Horton, co-founder in the 1930s
R E V I E W ~
. ,
of the Highlander Folk School, which was run on the principle
that people can and must solve their own problems. In short, we
see that the organizing of the 1960s was built upon economic,
political and social networks established much earlier.
It's also important to remember that, regardless of the hero-
ism oflocal people and those who bravely ventured in from out-
side, the civil rights movement succeeded at an historical
moment when conditions were right. The sharecropper econo-
my was crumbling. Mississippi was rapidly moving out of iso-
lation under the newly vigilant eye of the federal government
and the attention of the media. Many black leaders were finan-
cially independent enough to withstand economic reprisals.
Mississippi Learning
And organizers benefited from working
with a tight church-based culture imbued
with the same rising expectations that
washed across much of post-World War
II America.
By Harold DeRienzo
DECEMBER 1995
we still use these tactics today. Do they
still work? Will they have any lasting
impact?
Some guidance is provided in
"I've Got the Light of Freedom: The
Organizing Tradition and the
Mississippi Freedom Struggle" by
Charles M. Payne of Northwestern
University. For those of us longing
for an understanding of how orga-
nizing can lead to systemic
change, Payne has provided one
of the finest, most comprehen-
sive books written on the sub-
ject.
Payne made a conscious
choice to take the hard road to
understanding. When you finish the book, you are
left with a real sense of what made the civil rights movement-
and what makes a movement in general. We are left seeing in
no uncertain terms, that the movement did not begin or end with
Martin Luther King, Jr. As stated so eloquently by organizer
Ella Baker, Dr. King did not make the movement, the move-
ment made Dr. King. Nor was the movement exclusively about
mass meetings and demonstrations. And no, the movement did
not enjoy the unflagging support of the Southern black church-
es. In fact, in rural areas, churches were early impediments.
Instead, Payne shows us how the movement was built upon
the work of people like Arnzie Moore, Septima Clark, Myles
Horton, Silas McGhee, Ella Baker, June Johnson, Bob Moses,
Fannie Lou Hamer and many others who are seldom mentioned
as important figures, let alone as the movement's necessary
foundation.
And what are the lessons for today?
Foremost, true grassroots organizing is central to the success
of any movement. Furthermore, organizing may not lead to
immediate success, but only create the nurturing environment
necessary for some future movement.
To understand the value of organizing, we must distinguish
organizing from mobilization. Mobilization, Payne explains, is
the gathering of people around an already-set agenda. It pre-
sumes the position is right, and the leaders are mostly self-
appointed. Mobilization may have some short-term gains but
accomplishes nothing in the long run unless it stems from a
more basic organizing effort.
At its core, organizing is about building relationships
between and among people with similar issues, needs and con-
cerns; between individuals, their groups and those in power;
and among groups with similar agendas.
In his epilogue, Payne refers to the current work of Freedom
Rider Bob Moses, whose Algebra Project is now a national suc-
cess. "Algebra may seem far removed from the civil rights
movement," Payne writes, "but the error there may be in our
tendency to reduce the movement to a 'civil rights' movement,
taking the narrow label more seriously than did the people who
participated in the movement."
He ends with a quote from Bob Moses: "The main thing is
not to set out with grand projects. Everything starts at your
doorstep. Just get deeply involved in something .... You throw a
stone in one place and the ripples spread."
Harold DeRienzo is president a/the Parodneck Foundation/or
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[Continuedfrom page 4]
LETTERS
formed earlier this year by groups in New
England and New York, is working. We set
three goals for the Fleet/Shawmut merger
and succeeded on three fronts. Our first
goal was to get public Federal Reserve
meetings in Boston, Hartford and Albany;
we did. Our second goal was to gain press
attention to the community reinvestment
issues involved in the merger; we succeed-
ed. Our third goal was to keep communi-
cation flowing through the northeast
regarding commitments made by Fleet.
That happened and is still happening
today-though it could be better with
more resources. Some of us won signifi-
cant agreements and more may win in the
future. Groups in all five states will con-
tinue to help each other nail down agree-
ments with Fleet.
The Massachusetts victory shows we
won because we had specific, aggressive,
but realizable demands; statewide scope;
grassroots strength; a strong track record
of organizing and implementing innova-
tive housing and economic development
programs with Fleet and Shawmut; and
strong political support.
We also want to correct some factual
errors. Massachusetts Affordable Housing
Alliance and Massachusetts Association of
Neighborhood Development Corporations
are both statewide groups, not Boston-
only organizations. Also, the agreement
totals $160 million with $40 million in
below-market financing.
The article is correct in saying that
MARA and MACOC did not oppose the
merger, but we did not support the merger
either, out of respect for our colleagues in
other states.
The biggest shortcoming of the article
was that it failed to ask or attempt to answer
some very important questions that face
communities in mega-mergers: How can
neighborhood groups successfully work
with each other across state lines? How do
you deal with community groups in differ-
ent stages of development and organization?
What should be done if organizations have
radically different strategies that canlt be
reconciled?
As banks get bigger and cross more
state borders, community groups must
CITY LIMITS
c
continue to develop ways to respond. NERA is not
perfect, but it's a beginning.
Ricanne Hadrian
Director of Community Investment, Massachusetts
Association of Community Development Corporations
Tom CallaJum, Director
Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance
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CITYLIMllS
HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST. Aff rdable Housing
Network, New Jersey seeks highly qualified housingjc mmunity devel-
opment specialist. Responsibilities include assessing mon-profit devel-
opment organizations' technical assistance needs a d providing in-
depth, on-site assistance in organization development, ommunity plan-
ning, project development, property management. Requirements:
Substantial experience working in community-based 0 ganizations on
real estate development projects and in community plan ingjorganizing.
Statewide travel/flexible work hours. Competitive salar excellent ben-
efits. Minority candidates encouraged to apply. Send re ume to Martha
Lamar, Affordable Housing Network, PO Box 1746, Tren on, NJ 08607.
HOUSING DEVELOPMENT COORDINATOR, FjT, for Isle, In ., a non-profit
community development organization. Responsibilities i clude: Project
coordination, feasibility analysis, community outreach, site selection
and acquisition, contract negotiation, financing a d marketing.
Minimum 3 years' experience in housing developmen . Salary com-
mensurate with experience. Send resume: Housing C ordinator, 10
Wood Street, Trenton, NJ 08618
COMMUNITY SPECIALIST. Facilitate the
less families to permanent housing through educatio al workshops;
case management; referrals; advocacy; and exten ive fieldwork.
Experience in social services and knowledge of commun ty-based orga-
nizations, building codes, and housing rights essential. B.A. or B.S.W,
fluency in Spanish, and strong counseling skills re uired. Salary
$23,745, plus solid benefits. Send to: American Red C ss in Greater
New York, Employee Resources, Department 1295CL, 1 0 Amsterdam
Avenue, NY, NY 10023. EOE/M/F/V/D.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZING DIRECTOR. Brooklyn communit development
and organizing group seeks experienced organizer to coordinate South
Brooklyn Community Organizing Initiative, including dire1t action orga-
nizing, political education, and leadership as well as
some tenants' and welfare rights work. Organizing a must.
Spanish-speaking a strong plus. $25,00-$33,000. AA/fOE. Resume
and cover letter (discussing your approach to community rganizing) to:
FAC, 199 14th St. Brooklyn, NY 11215
ADMINISTRATlVE DIRECTOR. The New York Peer AIDS Coalition,
Inc. (NYPAEC), a not-for-profit organization providing HI AIDS educa-
tion/prevention and harm reduction information to st et youth, is
seeking a qualified individual with experience in: financia analysis and
projection, budget development and maintenance, bas c accounting
and bookkeeping, accounts payable and receivable, pa roll reporting
and disbursement, personnel and benefits administratio ,grants man-
agement and contract compliance. Phone inquiries ot accepted.
Interested parties should submit a resume along with require-
ments to: Aaron Keppel, Executive Director, NYPAEC, In ., 437 West
16th Street, New York, NY 10011. NYPAEC strongly enc urages appli-
cations from persons from groups traditionally discrimi ated against
including women, persons of color, persons who are han icapped, per-
sons with a diagnosis of HIV or AIDS, lesbians/gay men and persons
with a history of substance use.
FAMILY SERVICES MANAGER. Westhab, the leading provid r of housing
and supportive services for the homeless, special neflds and low
income populations in Westchester County, seeks an expenienced social
work administrator. Plan, organize and direct all social se vices provid-
ed to families in Tier II shelter. MSW preferred; requires three years'
experience in program development/management plus ex ellent verbal
and written communication skills and ability to ensure c ordination of
service efforts with other agencies. Salary in 30s plus e cellent bene-
fits. Send resume with salary history to G. Bishop, HR Mgr, 85 Executive
Blvd. , Elmsford, NY 10523. Fax: (914) 345-3139
DECEMBER 1995
DIRECTOR OF SOCIAL SERVICES. Westhab, the leading provider of housing
and supportive services for the homeless, special needs and low
income populations in Westchester County, seeks experienced social
work administrator. Administrate social work programs serving over 200
families residing either in emergency apartments or in properties owned
and managed by Westhab and oversee the work of ten employees in all
aspects of program design, implementation and service delivery. The
Director will be responsible for designing a new program to transition
homeless families to financial independence. MSW preferred; requires
five years experience supervising social service programs for families
plus excellent verbal and written communication skills, strong adminis-
trative management skills, and ability to ensure coordination of services
efforts with other agencies. Salary 40K+ and excellent benefits. Send
resume with salary history to G. Bishop, HR Mgr, 85 Executive Blvd. ,
Elmsford, NY 10523. Fax: (914) 345-3139.
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT. Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE) is a 21-
year-old nonprofit organization with staff of about 25, located in the
Lower East Side/Chinatown neighborhood. AAFE is dedicated to pro-
tecting and promoting the rights of those in need, especially Asian
Americans, by organizing the community and advocating for access to
resources in the areas of civil rights, affordable housing, economic
development and social services. AAFE is seeking an experienced pro-
fessional to oversee all fundraising activities. Develop and implement
annual goals and objectives; identify and cultivate new funding sources
and report to existing sources; oversee production of all corporate putr
lications; coordinate public relations, annual fundraising events, direct
mail and donor development programs. Qualifications: B.A. degree and
a minimum of 3 years experience. Excellent written and oral communi-
cation skills, computer experience. Ability to speak Chinese or Korean
a plus. Salary commensurate with experience. Resume and cover let-
ter to Executive Director, AAFE, 111 Division Street, New York, NY
10002. EOE.
LEGISlATlVE ORGANIZER. Conduct citywide organizing campaign on NYS
and Federal budget issues concerning low-income/welfare issues.
Staff borough coalitions, organize legislative visits, and conduct train-
ings at the neighborhood level for low-income people. 2 years expo
Spanish language helpful. Salary: mid 20s. DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR:
Conduct fundraising activities including grants, special events and indi-
vididual donor campaign. 4 years' experience, $ 30-35k. Resumes to
HANNYS 115 E. 23rd St. 10th FI., New York, NY 10010. Fax: (212)
674-1946.
SENIOR COMMUNITY ORGANIZER with leadership skills to focus on neigh-
borhood preservation through outreach to both tenants and landlords,
special events planning and housing rights workshop development. nH-
ANT ORGANIZER to promote housing rights education and tenant advoca-
cy to improve living conditions for the members of our community.
Candidates for either position must be bilingual in Chinese and familiar
with housing issues and government/legal process. A legal and/or
social work background is helpful. We are also seeking a HOMEOWNER
SHIP OUTREACH COORDINATOR with strong communication and presenta-
tion skills who will arrange homeownership-related seminars for the
community and assist in publicizing homeownership opportunities; and
a MORTGAGE COUNSELOR with banking, mortgage, or real estate back-
ground to provide counseling in the homebuying process and provide
technical assistance for outreach efforts. Asian Americans for Equality
is a 21 year old non-profit organization with a staff of about 25, located
in the Lower East Side/Chinatown neighborhood of New York City. We
provide a range of services including housing rights advocacy and edu-
cation, homeownership and fair lending counseling, low income housing
development and youth leadership programs. Candidates for these posi-
tions must be bilingual in either Chinese or Korean. Salaries DOE.
Resumes to AAFE, 111 Division Street, NYC 10002. Fax: 212-964-
6003.
-
~
1
s w ~ ~
harity
By Rose Marie Arce
his gift-giving season should bring a windfall for the folks at the Children's Aid Society. Just imagine their
fundraising mail. Poor families. Poor, minority families. Poor minority families with lovely children. Bad
neighborhoods. Bad playgrounds. Even bad food.
But a little simple math might flip your smile. The entire
budget for the society runs about $31 million. About 60 percent
of that is public funding (your taxes), another 30 percent is
foundation money (your tax deductions) and 10 percent comes
directly from you. Of late, politicians have been preaching an
"eliminate-the-middle man" philosophy for helping the disad-
vantaged. They propose that government stop redistributing our
wealth to the needy. Instead, we have the option of giving our
money to whomever we want-or of not giving it. That's why
last year the society lost $1 million in government funds and
this year will lose another $1.5 million.
Now, consider that the Children's Aid Society serves
100,000 people in this city each year with health care services,
education, recreation, food, you name it. Assuming you believe
we need them to do this and that they do it well, you'll proba-
bly want to help.
The society asks for money approximately one million times
each year in heartbreaking, pleaful letters that solicit about
20,000 individual contributions averaging $50 each. They also
have big ticket events that draw another $2 million. Fundraisers
say they can't squeeze those $I,ooo-a-plate types for another
penny. Little donors (me and you) are always more sympathet-
ic, but for that 10 percent to grow, our average donation must
rise to about $150.
Of course, the "more with less" politicos will tell you these
nonprofit organizations can deliver the same services with
fewer resources. You
know, the "streamlining,"
"downsizing," "reinventing,"
school of thought.
Last year, the Children's Aid Society "streamlined" their
staff by 20 percent, "downsizing" services to hundreds of
youngsters. Exactly how you reinvent a meal, I'm not certain.
They did their part. But as of the month of November, we
had not done ours. Contributions to the society are running 10
percent behind last year. In fact, overall charitable giving barely
kept up with inflation last year. That was hailed as "good" news
in the philanthropic community after three years of decline.
I think the trouble is that we, the givers, are overwhelmed by
the need. That's why we elected the middle men in the fust
place. We didn' t want to make these tough decisions.
In just a few days last week, I was faced with mail of
Miracle on 34th Street proportions. There were pleas to help
disabled people of two races, AIDS sufferers of two sexualities
and a variety of ages, Puerto Rican traveling theater, a candi-
date for a congressional race in Buffalo, a mayor's race in San
Francisco, an ocean full of fish and public radio. I give money
to defend children, clothe adults, and to fight AIDS, nuclear
weapons and fanatical Christians. I give money to anyone
who sends me return address labels because it's so pathetic.
Yet, I realize by screening my check stubs that I too am 10
percent behind. I'm not sure anymore which of these groups is
truly needy or, if they are, whether I can afford them. Can you
help everyone without failing to help anyone enough? 'This is
not a black hole," one society fundraiser says of cuts in gov-
ernment funding. ''This is a bottomless pit."
Good fundraisers spin those "It'll-never-be-enough" quotes
all the time, then go on to commit verbal pickpocketing any-
way. Mine happened on my birthday. A letter from the
Children's Aid Society stamped "handle with care" sought gifts
of $35 to $5,000.
A child named Camelino, age 10, told readers, "One day I
got very sick. My mother did not have any money to pay the
doctor. I was feeling very sad and my mother was feeling very
worry." That same day newspapers quoted a study by the
Department of Health and Human Services estimating that the
Senate welfare bill will push 1.1 million children into poverty.
I can't fill the million dollar deficit of the Children's Aid
Society and still help the paralyzed vets. I can't stop those chil-
dren from becoming poor. I would be glad to at least cough up
the $150, if I thought the middle man were really going away.
Until then, I guess, I'll just write back to Camelino and give,
give, give, give-until it hurts .
Rose Marie Arce is a local television news producer.
~ ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~
CITY LIMITS
Crossland
Providing assistan e Savings
to community
projects in the Nef York
City metropolitan rea.
Please contact CrossL nd regarding your financing needs.
Andrew D. Kelman, Vice President
Communi y Reinvestment Officer
211 Montaguel Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
( 18) 780-0448
Crossl and is a subsidiary of Brooklyn Bancorp. Inc.
NOVEMBER 1995
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The Times Are Changing Back
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by white male senators; the politics of race and civil rights shunted aside ....
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