.onOB[R 1991 ~3.

0~

Bochco Botches B'klyn
-
A
nother Septembel; another Steven Bochco cop drama on the boob tube.
Seems harmless enough. But this time around, his latest orgy of boom-
ing handguns and white-guy angst reads like a commercial for the
Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.
EDITORIAL
Couch potatoes all over the nation can now see
Brooklyn as the heart of darkness where Christ-like
white cops battle homicidal black guys. The Park-Slope-
as-streets-of-hell imagery of Bochco's "Brooklyn South"
is ludicrous enough (where are the moms with
strollers?), but the pilot episode's really stupid insinua-
tion is that community activists who question cop behav-
ior are loopy radicals. Here's a plot summary: pair of
maniacs with guns shoots up a bunch of cops for the fun of it. Cops die. One
nasty gunman, hit during the shoot-out, expires of his wounds on the floor of
the precinct house. Dead gunman's bombastic and racist sister (unlikable black
woman with dreadlocks) screams at cops that they murdered her brothel: Her
reverend friend, the "community leader" a la Herbert Daughtry, threatens cops
that they better fess up or they' ll face a public relations nightmare.
Problem is, the gunman who died in custody was already full of lead when
captured and is obviously guilty of killing cops. No reverend would be able to get
a "community" behind his "leadership" in this case. The implication is that
every community activist that steps inside a stationhouse is an outside agitator
questioning real men doing real work.
All this makes for visceral soap-style drama, the kind that ropes in advertis-
ers and an audience. But it comes across like an attempt to win respect for the
worst elements of the NYPD. Real victims of the gratuitous police violence that
tens of thousands of New Yorkers have protested since the Abner Louima inci-
dent are not cop killers or violent criminals. They are people like Louima or
Anthony Baez, who expressed their anger toward a temperamental violent man
with a badge--and got killed or raped or othelwise brutalized in return.
Reviewers, including the Times' Caryn James, somehow found "Brooklyn
South" a timely exploration of cop corruption. What'd I miss? The show sets up
a straw cop critic and takes her apart for thrills, while feeding white middle
America's paranoia about and disdain for 1) black activists, 2) black Brooklyn.
The funniest part of all of this? There were no male black cops in the cast
when reporters saw a preview this summer-just a white precinct besieged by
the natives. After Bochco and company belatedly realized their folly they insti-
tuted an editing room minority hiring policy, shooting a bunch of new scenes
with a black cop and weaving them through the episode.
Wonder what Abner Louima thinks about this as he lies in his hospital bed,
still in critical condition seven weeks after his encounter inside the 70th Precinct.
Andrew White
Editor
City Limits relies on the generous support of its readers and advertisers, as well as the following funders:
The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, The Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, The Edna
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The New York Foundation, The Taconic Foundation, M& T Bank, Citibank, and Chase Manhattan Bank.
Cover photo by Lisa Kahane
(ity Limits
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CITY LIMITS
OCTOBER 1997
FEATURES
Sweet Victory ~
To 2,000 Brooklyn tenants, the federal government's low-income housing
tax-shelters have created a slumlord subsidy. After 25 years of living with
rats, leaky roofs and gun battles, the residents finally found a friend in
Washington: the anti-Mafia RICO law. By Andrew White
Poor Richard's Almanac
This summer, a college intern agreed to help a welfare recipient
handle a couple of problems. Their travails have lessons to teach all of
us about welfare reform. Excerpts from a journal. By Lauren Grover
Stumble in the Bronx
This was supposed to be the Year of the Bronx. Instead it was the year
that the revved-up Bronx political machine led by Roberto Ramirez crashed-
after backing the only council incumbent feckless enough to lose his seat. Just when
it seemed peace had broken out in the South Bronx, total war rages anew.
By Glenn Thrush
PROFILE
C'est Ie Temps d'Giuliani ~
The Haitian community has proven repeatedly it can deliver huge numbers of
people to the streets. By Carl Vogel
PIPELINES
H2
0we
~
For more than five years now, water and sewer costs have been strangling
low-income housing. Local pols have left tenants awash in unmet promises.
By Kemba Johnson
Blight, Camera, Action Plan ~
What's all this hugging, grinning and camera-mugging in East New York?
Not much. By Joe Gould
Shaking the Foundations ~
A provocative new study of right-wing philanthropies reveals an effective
strategy for changing public opinion. But few mainstream foundations want
in on the action. By Robin Epstein
A Hard Fall in Harlem
Activist Marie Runyon never backs down from a fight. That can be a problem
when the opponents are your own board members. By Kathleen McGowan
Cityview
Hello, You Must Be Going
Review
Bare Market
Editorial
Briefs
COMMENTARY
134
By Don Friedman
13B
. By Chuck Collins
DEPARTMENTS
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Tel: 212-250-7118 Fax: 212-250-8552


Bilal Muhammad demonstrates the equipment at Park Slope's new Ecomat, an environmentally friendly alternative to dry
cleaning Created by the Fifth Avenue Committee, the Ecomat will provide living wage jobs for Brooklyn residents
THE GREAT COMPLAINT PURGE
The state's housing agency
admits that it routinely takes years to
rule on tenant allegations that land-
lords overcharge them on stabilized
rent. So the state Division of Housing
and Community Renewal has come
up with a novel way to clear out its
backlog: a new paperwork hurdle
that forces many tenants to drop
their cases.
DHCR-which has been without a
commissioner since Joseph Holland
resigned in late 1996-claims it has
reduced its tenant-complaint backlog
by a whopping 40,000 over the last
year by improving its response and
review procedures. But lawyers, ten-
ants and advocates charge that the
agency has cleaned out its docket by
ordering tenants who have filed com-
plaints to resubmit their paperwork
within 21 days- or forfeit their over-
charge complaint. Since many ten-
ants either ignore the request or are
Short Shot
OF THE CANDIDATES RUNNING
FOR MAYOR IN THE PRIMARY,
Dominick Fusco had the most specif-
ic motive. The unsuccessful Inde-
pendence Party candidate enunciat-
intimidated by the paperwork
required, many complaints have
apparently been cleared off the
rolls-without the cases ever being
seriously investigated.
"It's not fair. It's like they were try-
ing to set a trap," says Emily Brown,
a Harlem tenant who first informed
DHCR her landlord was overcharging
her $60 a month in rent in 1992.
"We're changing, but it's a good
thing, not a bad thing," DHCR
spokeswoman Diane Ackerman
responds. "It used to take us five
years to deal with the overcharge
complaints." In May, City Limits
quoted Ackerman as estimating that
the number of new overcharge com-
plaints had declined dramatically-
down to 500 complaints a year, com-
pared with 1,300 filed in 1993.
"People must be happy with their
landlords," she said at the time.
But Ackerman could not say
ed it in one audacious run-on sen-
tence reproduced in the 1997 New
York City Voter's Guide: "I intend to
address the issue of .. .. the refusal of
the Chancellor to prove his charges
of corruption .. .. ..
For the uninitiated, Fusco is a
longtime Democratic operative who
whether most of those cases
cleared were as a result of agency
rulings- or if they were purged
from the rolls on bureaucratic tech-
nicalities.
She denied the policy change was
intended to purge legitimate com-
plaints, but since the Pataki adminis-
tration has taken office, the agency
has not reported tenant . complaint
statistics to the legislature as
required by law.
Some lawyers and advocates say
they have seen a slight speeding up
of some DHCR decisions, but that it
does not account for the huge reduc-
tion in the backlog list. "The people
that are being cleared off the backlog
aren't people who are getting deci -
sions," says Sondra Rutherford, a pri-
vate tenant advocate who is current-
ly assisting 100 tenants with their
overcharge complaints. "These are
people who are getting knocked out
of the picture because they are not
filing their paperwork."
- Glenn Thrush
served as the attorney for Carmelo
Saez, Bronx School Board 9's presi-
dent. Chancellor Rudy Crew removed
Saez last year for abusing the privi-
leges of his office-including
allegedly renting pay-per-view porno
movies on school time. During
Fusco's tenure as board attorney he
NEW GRANTS
FOR CO('S
A consortium of 21 local and
national foundations and corpora-
tions has pooled more than $8 mil-
lion to provide New York City's com-
munity-based housing and develop-
ment groups with new, large oper-
ating support grants.
Beginning this fall, the Neigh-
borhood 2000 Fund, chaired by Gary
Hattem of Bankers Trust Company
and administered by the New York
Community Trust, will give grants
amounting to as much as $300,000
per community group over four
years to at least 25 organizations.
The funding pool's founders
include Hattem, Steve Flax of M&T
Bank and Anita Nager of the
Community Trust. "We thought this
was an opportunity to bring in new
sources of money from national
foundations that could not support
individual groups but would be
attracted by a pooled fund in their
hometown, and from corporations
that had not traditionally supported
community development but were
interested from a business point of
view in strengthening New York
neighborhoods: Nager said.
Groups can use the grants for
strategic planning, organizational
and staff development. community
organizing-or to pay for basic
overhead expenses.
Nager said the fund hopes to
raise a total of $15 million and aims
to eventually make 50 of the four-
year grants. Participants include
longtime CDC funders J.P. Morgan,
Republic National Bank, Uris
Brothers Foundation, Chase
Manhattan, and the Edna
McConnell Clark Foundation, as well
as relative newcomers such as Fuji
Bank and Trust. Bank of China and
the Wolfensohn Family Foundation.
For a copy of the Neighborhood
2000 Fund RFP, call Norma Rollins at
(212) 686-0010, ext. 602.
-Andrew White
happily knocked would-be board
candidates off the ballot.
Not for nothing did the state legis-
lature confiscate hiring and budget
powers from the boards.
Incidentally-Sal Albanese beat
Fusco, taking the Independence
Party line on November's ballot.
CITY LIMITS

COURT-LV
lANDLORDS
If you are poor and live in the
Bronx, landlord lawyers have a mes-
sage for you: See you in court.
Bronx tenants are far more like-
ly to be dragged into Housing
Court-and ultimately kicked out of
their apartments-than tenants in
any other borough, according to a
stunning new study of court data by
the non-profit Citizens Advice
Bureau.
Even though the Bronx ranks
fourth among the five boroughs in
tenant population, it leads the city in
almost all housing court actions ini-
tiated by landlords. Bronx courts
also ranked first in counter-motions
filed by tenants in danger of immi-
nent eviction.
Despite having about half as
many tenants, the Bronx has
matched Brooklyn's average of about
5,700 evictions a year in the 1990s.
Bronx Housing Court is the
busiest because of the large size of
most apartment buildings in the bor-
ough and the low incomes of the
tenants, says Davi d Rubel, the
report's author. Bigger buildi.ngs, run
by big management companies,
often have the resources to retain
lawyers to file rafts of nonpayment
claims against tenants. Over 75 per-
cent of South Bronx tenants live in
buildings with more than 20 apart-
ments, compared to 44 percent in
Brooklyn.
"In other poor neighborhoods,
you have much smaller buildings run
by smaller-time landlords," Rubel
said, "They don't have the money to
take tenants to court whenever they
feel like it. In the Bronx, it's a totally
different situation."
Bronx lawyers also pursue out-of-
court settlements less frequently,
Rubel explained, because only 6.3
percent of Bronx tenants have
lawyers of their own. The citywide
average is around 15 percent. Forthe
report, call: 718-365-0910.
-Glenn Thrush
Resources
TRUE, THE STATE WELFARE
REFORM lAW ISNl AS HARSH
as it might have been. But tough new
workfare rules are coming for tens of
thousands of pregnant women, new
OCTOBER 1997
"IS ANYBODY HOME? I NEED A FRESH SET OF NUMBERS SHOWING A DRAMATIC 11IRNAl1J1lND IN
STATE TAKES BANK SHOT AT POOR
New York banks may soon get
credit for lending to wealthier "mid-
dle income" borrowers under pro-
posed changes to regulations gov-
erning their operations in low-
income communities.
The rules, which dictate how
regulators enforce the state's ver-
sion of the federal Community
Reinvestment Act, are supposed to
force banks to better serve poor
customers. Activists charge that the
new rules, if enacted unchanged,
will allow banks to shirk some of this
responsibility by lending to the bet-
ter-off at the expense of the impov-
erished.
Under the rules change, banks
would receive state CRA credit for
lending to people in households
with annual incomes ranging from
$37,840 to $56,760 or lending in
neighborhoods where the average
income is between $30,000 and
mothers and disabled recipients.
For a copy of a new, comprehen-
sive summary of the state law pub-
lished by the Community Food
Resource Center and the Welfare
Reform Network, call Don Friedman
at (212) 344-0195, or go to
www.wnylc.com on the Web.
$45,000. Today, banks must serve
families with incomes that are far
less than that in order to get good
CRA ratings. Banks typically seek
top ratings because they are useful
in heading off challenges to merg-
ers based on CRA complaints.
Regulators argue that the lan-
guage will encourage banks to serve
a population that also has a tough
time getting a mortgage in New York
City's expensive housing market.
This provision was designed to help
people such as nurses and firefight-
ers, who may be making a good
income, but still lack enough to buy a
new home in the city and surround-
ing suburbs, said Andrew Kelman,
director ofthe Banking Department's
Community Reinvestment Unit. He
emphasized that banks will still be
judged on their low- and moderate-
income lending too.
"This is an additional activity,"
WHEN IT COMES TO CORPORATE
WELFARE, MAYOR GIULIANI
gives first and asks questions later,
according to a new report. Firms that
have signed lucrative retention deals
over the last three years face little or
no sanction when they layoff work-
added his colleague Stacey Cooper.
"This is not in lieu of low-income
lending."
Activists, however, are already
mobilizing to fight the provision. At
a mid-September meeting the New
York City Community Reinvestment
Task Force at a mid-September
meeting agreed to demand hear-
ings on the proposal. They are also
organizing a letter-writing cam-
paign to the Banking Department.
"We understand the critical need
for lending in middle-income
neighborhoods," said task force
member Sarah Ludwig, executive
director of the Neighborhood
Economic Development Advocacy
Project. "But we don't believe this
is in the purview of the CRA law. If
you're concerned about helping
low- and moderate-income people,
you need to concentrate on that."
-Kim Nauer
ers or fail to create new jobs, accord-
ing to State Senator Franz Leichter,
an Upper West Side Democrat.
At least nine companies axed
jobs after signing deals. For a copy of
the report, call (212) 397-5913.

PROFILE
Protesting Abner
Louima s alleged
torture by police.
thousands of
Haitians took to
the streets.
:M
"
C'est Ie Temps d'Ciuliani
New Y o r k ~ Haitian community has a long history of fighting
injustice back home. Now activists are hoping to harness
that spirit for local power. By Carl Vogel
W
hen ten to twenty thou-
sand protesters poured
across the Brooklyn
Bridge on August 29 to
voice their rage about
police officers' alleged torture of Haitian-
American Abner Louima, they were fol-
lowing a well-worn path-both literally
and figuratively. By most estimates, more
than half of them were Haitian. And many
had been there before.
In April 1990, thousands of Haitian
marchers closed down the bridge to
denounce the federal Food and Drug
Administration's ban on blood donations
by Haitian and African nationals. (The
ban, rooted in a fear of AIDS, was lifted a
few weeks later). And during the 1980s
and early 1990s, Haitian organizations in
New York City held dozens of large rallies
denouncing federal detention of their
refugees and challenging Washington's
support of brutal Haitian dictators like
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.
Population figures vary according to
whoever is doing the accounting (70,000
foreign-born Haitians in New York City
according to the 1990 Census, or about
600,000 people with a Haitian background
in the New York metro area according to
community leaders), but the fact remains:
This immigrant group knows how to be
heard-it is an organizer's dream when it
comes to turnout for an action. What is it
that the Haitian community is doing right?
"Haitians love being in the street. It's
like the street is their press, their opportu-
nity to show the world injustice has been
done," says Ricot Dupuy, station manager
at Radio Soleil, which presents news and
music by cable subscription to Haitians in
the New York region. Part of this is a cul-
ture brought from Haiti, where brutal
political repression generated a street-level
response. Once in this country, refugees
seized the chance to change U.S. govern-
ment policies toward their Caribbean
nation, and regular protests became the
norm. Another factor is more basic, how-
ever: Haitians have faced an inordinate
amount of injustice in recent years, and
they have learned to respond quickly and
as a group.
"Because we feel threatened all the
time, we have a tendency to get together as
one," says Florence Bonhoumme-Camou,
a longtime activist and coordinator of the
Haitian Affairs Committee, a civil rights
group. "If we were not learning anything
from all those marches, we would not be
moving forward."
Communal Action
The Haitian community is served by
several newspapers, more than a handful
of cable television shows and two 24-hour
radio stations that pair metro New York
news with news from home, which
CITVLlMITS

Haitians are always eager to hear. Dupuy
estimates that Radio Soleil has more than
400,000 Haitian listeners in the region.
The station regularly broadcasts calls for
communal action. "Radio is the lifeblood
of Haitian people," he says. "There are
many homes in our community where the
radio is never off, day or night."
In the New York area, there are hun-
dreds of Haitian groups--each with roots
in one hometown. They raise money and
desperately needed supplies to send back
to relatives and friends, and they are
another vehicle for efficient organizing. "If
we are having a march, there is a list of all
the grassroots organizations. When we call
them, we say, 'If you are from La Vallee
De Jacmel, tell everyone from there. If you
are from Port-au-Prince, tell the others in
your group,'" says Bonhoumme-Camou.
The Catholic church, a very strong institu-
tion in the Haitian community, serves the
same purpose.
The Haitian American Alliance (HAA)
and Haitian Enforcement Against
Racism-the former a well-established
civic group, the latter a crew of media-
savvy activists-organized the Louima
march with rapid-response public rela-
tions, town meetings, speeches at Catholic
masses and phone calls to leaders of
African American and Caribbean
American groups, says Dr. Jean Claude
Compas, a family practitioner in Crown
Heights who sits on the HAA board.
"Over the years we developed some
skill in organizing people," Compas
explains. "Not only in terms of the public
relations itself, but slogans, leaflets,
speeches and all the thousands of details
involved."
As important and exciting as the
demonstrations are, however, Haitian
activists have come to realize that they
are not enough to win lasting change.
"Haitians are like a sleeping giant. When
they get annoyed by something, they
wake up and smash it down and then go
back to sleep again," says Jocelyn
McCalla, executive director of the
National Coalition of Haitian Rights
(NCHR), which trains community lead-
ers in the nuts and bolts of organizing.
"When there is a crisis like the [FDA]
AIDS policy, we rise up and organize one
of the largest demonstrations in New
York City. But something like that
achieves very little to stop the spread of
AIDS .... We need to organize with other
groups affected by AIDS around issues
like affordable treatment and making
new drugs available to people who need
them."
OCTOBER 1997
Day-to-Day Llf.
Others are building community organi-
zations focused exclusively on issues that
impact day-to-day life at the heart of the
Haitian community. The Community Action
Project, a church-based group, has 15 mem-
ber churches with about 75,000 congre-
gants-and helps local residents fight for
better education, affordable housing, eco-
nomic development and other crucial neigh-
borhood issues.
Tens of thousands of immigrants from
Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and other
Caribbean nations also live in Flatbush,
and CAP reflects this diversity. Francois
Pierre-Louis, the group's director since its
inception in 1992, says there is an increas-
ing solidarity among these various immi-
grant groups, an observation born out at
the Louima rally where flag-bearing con-
tingents from a variety of nations were
spread throughout the crowd.
Pierre-Louis, who served for a short
time as a minister of organizing in the
Aristide government, agrees that Haitian
Americans are turning more of their atten-
tion to life here in the United States. The
shift has been prompted by improvements
in the Haitian government back home-
and by increasing pressure on immigrants
here due to the new welfare laws. "We
didn't like the government in Haiti and the
only way to express that was through
protest. We've been very good at that," he
says. "But organizing to attempt change
and build a power base here in our own
community, we're very new at that."
Can Haitians successfully translate
their passion for change in Haiti to change
here in New York? Some indications, such
as the increased amount of local news on
Radio Soleil and the formation of groups
like CAP, seem to indicate that they will.
"Politics are important and eventually will
be a big piece of our strategy," Pierre-
Louis says. He points to the Dominican
community in Washington Heights as a
model, with its influential political muscle
and growing community institutions as
well as its ability to muster economic
development dollars.
"They may not be able to put 50,000
people on the street," he says. "But when
you look at the access to the power struc-
ture the Dominicans have, look at what
they' ve achieved, it's impressive."
Carl Vogel is a former editor of The
Neighborhood Works and a contributing
editor to City Limits.
.,he New York
Women's
Founda1:lion
is pleased to announce its 1998 grants program.
Over $500,000 will be awarded in grants of up to $30,000
to nonprofit organizations and programs which will con-
tribute to moving low-income women and girls towards
economic self-sufficiency by serving their employment,
education, child care, housing and health care needs.
Individuals are not eligible for grants.
"0 learn how co apply for a aranc, celephone
che foundacjon ac (212) 226-2220.
Proposals must be received in the foundation s office
no later than Friday, November 7, 1997, 5:00 p.m.
at 120 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10012.


PIPElINE i
,
!.M
Drowning in debt, revisited. Five years after it became clear
that soaring water and sewer bills had thrown low-income
housing into crisis, politicians are still passing the buck.
By Kemba Johnson
A
rchie McDaniel remembers
the good old days 25 years
ago when he and his fellow
tenants took over their
Harlem building, eventually
turning it into a low-income co-op. Back
then, they had the money to install a work-
ing elevator, replace the plumbing and
refurbish the apartments. Now the building
dips into the red more often than not. And
needed roof repairs may be impossible
before winter arrives, he sighs.
A major culprit is the city's ever-
increasing water and sewer bills. Over the
past year, the 47-unit co-op's bills tripled
from $4,000 to $12,000. "It's like the
building's on fIre and no one is going to
throw water on us," McDaniel says.
Across the city, low-income housing
is in jeopardy as rising water and sewer
costs strain already thin budgets.
Roughly 20 percent of the city's
limited-equity cooperatives-
properties landlords abandoned,
the city renovated and tenants
now own-are at risk of default
on their tax bills because of the cost
jump, according to a coali-
tion of cooperatives. And
many private landlords face
mounting debts in neigh-
borhoods where incomes
cannot support higher rents.
Housing advocates fear the inevitable
result will be renewed abandonment and
foreclosure.
The problem has been setting off
alarm bells for five years now, yet solu-
tions are no more apparent today than
when City Limits fIrst broke the news in
October 1992.
Water and sewer charges have run well
ahead of inflation for nearly a decade.
Water bills increased 6.5 percent last year,
6.5 percent this year and will be
7.4 percent higher next
year. That's lower than the
exorbitant increases of a
few years ago-rates rose
24.3 percent in 1990 alone-
yet the city's Water Board esti-
mates that, by 2002, the average water bill
will have increased another 45 percent.
"All of a sudden a monster came to
take away what we worked hard to cre-
ate," says Dalma De La Rosa, an activist
with the Bronx Water Alliance and a
staff member for a Bronx low-income
housing group. "This monster is water
and sewer bills."
Out of Control
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and leaders in
the City Council, the state legislature and
key city agencies each admit the skyrock-
eting water bills are a problem. They each
also blame the structure of the system. In
1984, the state legislature set up the Water
Board to set rates and the Water Finance
Authority to sell bonds to pay for system
improvements. The city's Department of
Environmental
Protection
( D E P )
uses rev-
enues
fro m
ratepayers and bonds to maintain and
improve the system. The rest goes to the
authority to payoff its debt. Each year, pol-
icymakers note with chagrin, the DEP and
Water Finance Authority have been able to
count on the Water Board to rubber-stamp
their requests, passing along all additional
costs to the general public.
The system, widely criticized for being
out of control, has few defenders. Yet no
one in power seems willing to take on the
challenge of reform.
Mayor Giuliani appoints all seven
members of the Water Board and could
demand accountability for rate hikes. But
he punted responsibility to the Department
of Housing Preservation and Development
(HPD) about two years ago, telling it to
form a task force to study the issue with
the DEP and nonprofits. Apparently, HPD
has done nothing since. "We've had a lot
of personnel changes and a new commis-
sioner, so 1 don't even know what the deal
is with that task force," says HPD deputy
press secretary Cassandra Vernon.
For their part, City Council leaders
insist that reform must come from the state
legislature, which created the independent
authority in the fIrst place. "1 am very
much concerned about the rates, but it's
out of our control," explains Stanley
Michels, chairman of the Environmental
Protection Committee.
Meanwhile in Albany, even Assembly
Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has sought to
secure his image as pro-tenant and pro-
affordable housing, has shown no inclina-
tion to put the water issue on the agenda.
"The speaker was aware of it and troubled
by it and was planning to look into it," says
Silver's spokesman, Skip Carrier. ''That's
about all he has to say on this."
Cons.rvation Measur.s
Low-income housing advocates
have won a few concessions over the
years. In 1993, the Water Board estab-
lished an annual cap-$750 on the first
apartment and $500 on each additional-
for buildings taking conservation mea-
sures.
The DEP, which does the billing, has
also forgiven extraordinarily high bills
resulting from leaks once the problems
have been fixed. There was also a rebate
program promoting the installation of
low-flow toilets. And buildings where
water meters have just been
installed can continue to be
billed under their for-
mer, often cheaper,
flat-rate formula for
two years.
CITY LIMITS
But since the Water Board views each
of these programs as transitional, advo-
cates must rally each year to extend them.
And even with such concessions, rising
costs are still strangling buildings in which
landlords and co-op boards are unable to
pass along the increase in rents or mainte-
nance fees.
To deal with the immediate crisis, both
landlord and housing advocacy groups
have been lobbying the Water Board to
simply lower the maximum amount that
anyone can be charged.
And for the long term, two ideas have
emerged to solve the problem. One is to
end a state-imposed rule that bans dis-
counts for anyone type of ratepayers, such
as buildings in low-income neighborhoods
or limited-equity cooperatives.
The second is to develop a billing sys-
tem, similar to those used in other large
cities, that spreads the cost of the system
more evenly.
Currently, some three-quarters of the
city's buildings are metered and are billed
based on how much water they use. But
buildings in low-income neighborhoods
tend to use more water because families
double up, take few vacations and have
people at home for greater parts of the
day, explains John McCarthy, executive
vice president of the Community
Preservation Corporation. These buildings
also tend to have older, leaky plumbing,
and the owners have less cash available to
fix chronic problems. As a result,
McCarthy says, these buildings are paying
more than their fair share to support a sys-
tem everyone uses. "That's the inequity,"
McCarthy says.
Advocates want the Water Board to
move to a two-part rate system, currently
used in cities like Los Angeles, Detroit and
Denver, that couples a metered fee with a
flat one to better distribute fixed costs.
Though it remains to be seen whether the
system would result in lower rates, advo-
cates say that it would, at the very least, be
more fair.
Members of the Water Board claim to
be studying these ideas. Yet they have
been on the table for more than three years
without any action. Now the question has
been put into the hands of consultants.
When will the board act? "I really can't
tell you," replies recent Water Board
appointee Susan Millington Campbell. "I
don't even have a ballpark."
Runaway Costs
Nothing's happened because no one is
willing or able to hold the system
accountable for what appear to be run-
OCTOBER 1997
Leffler hopes oversight will force water rates
down. lIThe DEP will have to justify its spending
to the council-and that hasn't happened
since the creation of the Water Board. "
away costs, critics charge.
The City Council tried to tackle rising
rates three years ago by passing legislation
giving itself final approval of the DEP's
budget before the Water Board set the
year's rates. Council members unanimous-
ly supported the measure, but Giuliani
vetoed the bill, writing in a letter to the
council that it "is without authority to leg-
islate in this area."
Instead of attempting to override the
mayor's veto, council leaders settled for a
voluntary resolution from the Water Board
pledging to hold off setting rates each year
until the budget passes. It takes effect next
year. The impact of this, says Councilman
Sheldon Leffler, "remains to be seen."
Nonetheless, Leffler says he hopes the
oversight will force water rates down.
"The DEP will have to justify its spending
to an elected body-the council-and that
hasn't happened since the creation of the
Water Board."
There is no doubt that the cost of pro-
viding water and sewer services has
increased substantially over the last
decade. Stricter environmental laws,
including a ban on dumping sludge into
the ocean and tougher water quality stan-
dards, have come along at a time when
federal and state support has all but disap-
peared. As a result, total costs between
1987 and 1994-including maintenance
and debt service-increased consumer
water bills by almost 200 percent.
"That's a heck of a load to place on
such a vital commodity," notes
Councilman Archie Spigner, chaim1an of
the Housing and Buildings Committee.
"Imagine having the transportation system
paid for exclusively by the fare payers. It
would be four bucks a ride."
Yet the fact remains that, by design, the
system's agencies are responsible to no
one. State legislators, when they took the
water system off the city's books in 1984,
purposely buffered the Water Board from
outside rate-setting regulation in order to
protect the Water Finance Authority's
bond investors. The idea was that any cost
increases could be easily passed along to
the system's users.
Consumer advocates argue that this
privilege has been abused. "It appears the
DEP decides how much it's going to spend
and the Water Board sets the rates accord-
ingly," says Suzanne Mattei, author of a
1995 study on the water system's billing
and customer service for Public Advocate
Mark Green. "There is very little cost con-
sideration, and they can do things in very
expensive ways."
The DEP pays 5,600 of its 6,000 civil
service employees out of money collected
from city water bills. It is also currently
facing accusations of accepting "unbal-
anced bids," which if true could mean the
agency is being bilked out of millions of
dollars.
An audit earlier this year by City
Comptroller Alan Hevesi posed serious
questions about the agency's contracting
practices, noting that in four contracts
alone the DEP paid $79.3 rnillion more
than the city's recommended fees. In one
case, the agency paid a joint venture
involving two engineering firms $58.1
million to oversee the construction of eight
sludge dewatering plants. This fee was
12.5 percent of the final construction cost;
the city's Office of Management and
Budget recommends that government
agencies pay only 3.5 percent for this type
of consultant work.
DEP officials respond that OMB's
guidelines are often inappropriate for the
kind of consulting contracts the agency
lets out. Still, they admit they aren't press-
ing the city to update its guidelines and
have yet to develop their own, as Hevesi's
audit recommends.
'The authorities are hard to control,
hard to change. They're designed to be
that way," Mattei says. She argues that the
Water Board should have at least two con-
sumer representatives, including one from
a low-income building.
Despite these institutional challenges,
though, advocates like De La Rosa remain
determined to succeed.
"If we can't win, we might as well pack
up all the poor people onto a barge and
leave," she says. "But we haven't won any-
thing in a year. It takes a long time."

- ,

PIPEliNE i
,
The Giuliani
campaign figured
out an ingenious
way to woo black
voters-and taxpay-
er funds covered
everything but the
camera crew.
-
Blight, Camera, Action Plan
Giuliani's plan for East New York turns out to be a TV commercial. By Joe Gould
I
n an asphalt lot, across from a half-
built movie theater on the comer of
Dumont Avenue in Brooklyn, City
Councilmember Priscilla Wooten
beamed over something called the
East New York Action Plan, which
described itself as "the City's coordinated
effort to build on East New York's
progress."
Also gathered into one of the city's
poorest-and overwhelmingly Demo-
cratic-neighborhoods was a hand-picked
audience of 100. There were commission-
ers munching popcorn provided by the
theater's developer, political boosters from
Rudy-friendly District Council 37, the
city's powerful municipal union, and a TV
news crew. Or at least what looked like a
news crew.
At first glance, the IS-page Action Plan
handed out on September 4 was a puzzle.
There wasn't much action. There was even
less of a plan.
It was a collection of old news: ''The
[Health Department] will be instituting a
Comprehensive Rodent Control Program."
Initiatives started by previous adminis-
trations: "PS. 190 has received $IS.9 mil-
lion for modernization."
Citywide projects long supported by
politicians other than Wooten or Giuliani:
"Important legislation will enable the
[Buildings Department] to serve violations
for illegally converting one- two- and
three- family homes into illegal apart-
ments."
And moldy public-private partnerships:
"[Business Improvement District] assess-
ments provide for weekend security patrol."
Walter Campbell, district manager of
Community Board 5-and arguably some-
one who should be included in an impor-
tant neighborhood action plan-hadn't
been consulted and, truth be told, seemed
totally disinterest-
ed. "I haven't had
the opportunity to
read it yet," said
Campbell.
Then six days
after the big
announcement,
the action behind
Giuliani's plan
became clear. The
document and
announcement-
written and staged
at taxpayer
expense-was in
fact a campaign
commercial. That
camera crew had
been paid for by
"Friends of Rudy
Giuliani."
The camera
pans over a huge action plan placard with
Wooten's voice-over: "We're going to
work as partners to bring this city togeth-
er." The councilwoman, wearing her sig-
nature Sunday straw hat, clutches the plan
with one arm and hugs the mayor with the
other. Fade to black.
Crying Racism
The motivations for producing the
commercial were obvious. "He's sending a
message to [minority] voters that he's not
the enemy," said political consultant
Norman Adler.
For Wooten, at the time facing a tough
primary challenge from Charles Barron, a
former Black Panther who netted impor-
tant endorsements from The Amsterdam
News and The New York Times, the plan
was a chance to prove she could deliver to
East New York's needy.
Wooten eventually went on to defeat
Barron, 62 to 3S percent. Barron, who
decried the mayor's school and welfare
cuts throughout his campaign, was incred-
ulous. "Giuliani, in the past, has devastat-
ed our community. Now he has a special
plan?"
Wooten said she would "cry racism" in
response to any suggestion that the action
plan was not a boon to the neighborhood.
And she heatedly dismissed criticism that
this was simply election-year politics."I
don't care [about the plan's timing] . I'm
too busy working. If people give gifts at
Christmas time, I' Il accept them. If they
give them at election-time, I'm elated."
Yet, a City Limits analysis failed to
come up with a single new "gift" in the
document. The plan also fails to make up
for Giuliani 's deep cuts to education and
youth services-which were largely unop-
posed by Wooten, who is chairperson of
the City Council's Education Committee.
"One of the things that needs action in
East New York is education. Wooten has
shown absolutely no leadership," says
Sister Kathy Maire, chief organizer for
East Brooklyn Congregations (EBC).
The mayor and Wooten used their
action plan to tout the expansion of EBC's
much-lauded Nehemiah housing program.
However, "Priscilla Wooten was only
marginally involved with the East New
York Nehemiah projects," says Lucille
Clark, an administrator for EBC, whose
leader, Reverend Johnny Ray Youngblood
was the project's prime mover. "And she
was uninvolved with the earlier
Brownsville Nehemiah projects."
In putting together the action plan, the
administration apparently felt no need to
deal with EBC or other community
groups. According to Planning
Department spokesman Bill Bernstein, the
document was created by a task force of
mayoral higher-ups. They also came up
with action plans for Jamaica, Queens and
Hunt's Point in the Bronx.
And what of the plan's future? That's
not clear, since many of the city officials
who supposedly worked on it aren't even
aware of its existence.
"'Action plan? Action plan?' You
keep saying 'action plan,'" said a staffer
at the Mayor's Community Assistance
Unit, which coordinates mayoral initia-
tives in the neighborhoods. "What is an
'action plan?'"
Glenn Thrush contributed to this story.
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CITY LIMITS
I
I
Shaking the Foundations
Right-wing foundations have built a policy and marketing machine that is transforming
American politics. Will mainstream philanthropy ever respond? By Robin Epstein
A
n extraordinary new report
that details how conserva-
tive philanthropists altered
the American p o l i ~ i c a l land-
scape IS prompttng some
soul searching among progressives in the
foundation world. But it has also high-
lighted a poorly recognized truth: main-
stream philanthropy is not animated by a
progressive or even liberal vision, despite
the right's frequent attempts to paint
major foundations as the architects of
countless radical blueprints.
The new report, written by Sally
Covington and published by the National
Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
(NCRP), analyzes the giving patterns of 12
conservative foundations, including the
John M. Olin, Lynde and Harry Bradley
and Sarah Scaife foundations, over a three-
year period. It concludes that these foun-
dations effectively concentrated their
resources toward achieving overarching
conservative public policy objectives,
including smaller government, lower taxes
and unregulated markets.
From 1992 through 1994, these foun-
dations invested $210 million on institu-
tions that shared their big-picture world
view and pushed for specific policy
changes such as deep cuts in federal anti-
poverty spending, fewer industrial and
environmental controls, privatization of
government services and the transfer of
responsibility for social welfare from
Washington to the charitable sector or state
and local government.
A handful of aggressively ideological
think tanks and advocacy groups, includ-
ing the Heritage Foundation and the
American Enterprise Institute, which
emphasize marketing and communications
as much as the development of policy
ideas, received close to $80 million from
the 12 conservative foundations during the
three years studied. Much of the grant
money was unrestricted general operating
support. In contrast, roughly comparable
institutions on the left are grossly under-
capitalized (see chart). The conservative
foundations also gave $9.3 million to a
network of state-based think tanks and
$16.3 million to conservative media.
If major foundations make their grant-
making even marginally more supportive
OCTOBER 1997
of liberal policy and advocacy work, it
could mean a few million more dollars to
counterbalance the right, Covington says.
The Snooze Button
In dozens of interviews conducted
since NCRP published the report,
"Moving A Public Policy Agenda: The
Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative
Foundations," City Limits found that main-
stream foundation leaders are divided over
whether they or their grantees should
express any ideological perspective, let
alone try to grab hold of the wheel of
American public policy.
Some funders say the report set their
alarm clocks ringing. Yet faced with the
author's counsel that foundations should
deploy their resources to project a clear
alternative to the right's political vision,
many of them feel they have little choice
but to slam the snooze button. America's
major foundations, both their staff and crit-
ics say, have no interest in pursuing the
kind of grantmaking perfected by the right.
"I really resist political labels, because
I would be hard-pressed, even with a gun
to my head, to say what we were, conserv-
ative or liberal," explains Denise Gray-
Felder, director of communications at the
Rockefeller Foundation. Conservative
foundations, she says, "have deliberately
gone out and created institutions and
trained scholars and worked with editorial
boards to push an ideological agenda, and
that's not what we' re really about."
Focusing instead on problems such as
infectious diseases, public school reform,
the global shortage of food and interracial
understanding, Rockefeller seeks to
explore solutions from across the political
spectrum, Gray-Felder says.
It helps to remember that the nation's
preeminent philanthropies were founded
by industry barons. And the corporate
presence on their current boards of trustees
explains in part why many foundations are
not interested in the business of charting a
new course for government policymaking.
Unlike their staffs, many of the founda-
tion's real decision-makers are in the busi-
ness of business.
While the Ford Foundation board
includes the former chief of the Cherokee
Nation, college presidents and nonprofit
leaders from South Africa, India and
Ecuador, it also includes current and
retired CEOs from Xerox Corporation,
Levi Strauss & Co. , Lucent Technologies
and Reuters Holdings, PLC. And a glance
at recent board lists from Carnegie and
MacArthur turns up corporate notables
from Fannie Mae, Bankers Life and
Casualty Company and Montgomery
Elevator International; media figures from
ABC, Time, Inc. and CNN; and lawyers
from powerhouse firms.
What 's more, while philanthropies
have sought to diversify their boards in
recent years, the trustees of the nation's
private foundations are still 89.3 percent
white and 73.7 percent male, according to
the Council on Foundations' 1996
Foundation Management Report.
MoComment
Though NCRP has received more atten-
tion for Covington's report than for any-
thing it has produced in its 2 I-year history,
its central message about the importance of
strategic planning for political change faces
an uphill battle.
"We frankly have no comment on the

PIPEliNE i
,
NCRP report
author Sally
CovingTOn hopes
mainstream
philanthropy will
learn from the
intellse national
policy focus of
conservative
f oundations.
Mp

report," Ford Foundation Vice President of
Communications Robert Curvin said vehe-
mently. "We don't think it's relevant to our
work, and we will go on doing what we've
been doing."
While Covington's analysis offers a
road-map for a well-fueled assault on the
status quo, major funders eschew the role of
field marshal. They prefer a measured kind
of engagement in public policy that some
call gutless, but that others deem more
humble and responsive to the grassroots.
Most of the country's foundations "are
chicken," charges Waldemar Nielsen, an
octogenarian foundation analyst whose
most recent book is "The Dramas of
Donorship." Sheltered, unnaccountable
and lacking in the muscular qualities of
their conservative counterparts, main-
stream philanthropies don't have a real
impact on the most urgent issues of the
day, he says. "Many of the main line foun-
dations tend to take a bland, neutral stance
or no stance on many of these issues," he
adds. "It represents a lack of courage, an
unwillingness to get into controversy. It's a
kind of hiding out from reality."
Not everyone agrees. Big mainstream
foundations have engaged in public policy
Combined
1995
Revenues of
Multi-Issue
Public Policy
Institutions
on the Left
and Right
$77 Million
$18.6 Million
Institute for Policy Studies
Economic Policy Institute
Citizens for Tax Justice
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
1Wentietb Century Fund
5 Center for the Study of Social Policy
z OMBWatch
~
Heritage Foundation
American Eoterprise Institute
Free Congress Research and
Education Foundation
Cato Institute
Ji Center for Community Change
-
LEFT
Citizens for a Sound Economy
RICHT
grantrnaking, but "they just haven't done it
in the way conservative funders have,"
counters Ellen Condliffe Lageman, a New
York University history and education pro-
fessor. "They haven't done it to build a
movement for broad change." The
Carnegie Corporation of New York has
worked hard to gain attention for its
research on the importance of stimulating
children's brain development between
birth and the age of three, says Lageman.
Mainstream philanthropy stresses the
importance of fairness and accuracy in the
research it sponsors, she says, while con-
servatives sponsor research specifically to
advance their own values. She questions
whether it would be good social policy for
the mainstream to adopt the right's tenden-
cy to "go for the jugular."
"It would be a disservice to a real
debate in the country if it's just ideological
mudslinging," says Vincent McGee, vice
president of the Irene Diamond Fund.
"From the broad range of philanthropy in
the middle, which is where most of us are,
there ought to be much more of a push for
serious, honest research on social issues
that takes a longer range view than today's
pocketbook and bank account."
Some mainstream and liberal funders
wouldn't dare presume to call the shots.
"It's our board's philosophy that it does-
n' t have all the answers," says Sandra
Silverman, executive director of the
Scherman Foundation. "We basically
believe people who are day-to-day run-
ning organizations have a handle on the
problems and on the best way to deal
with them."
Media Savvy
While foundations don't expect
grantees to be their ideological standard-
bearers, some do consider advocacy cen-
tral to their grantmaking. Scherman,
Silverman adds, supports "organizations
that are trying to mobilize people to use
effective tools of communication."
Many foundation leaders say they are
impressed by the report's exegesis of the
conservatives' media savvy, and hope to
help their grantees do a better job of telling
their story. After all, as the report points
out, the Heritage Foundation has four mar-
keting divisions-public relations, govern-
ment relations, academic relations and cor-
porate relations-and senior management
meets twice weekly to coordinate the mes-
sages these divisions deliver.
"We' re in a society now that's driven by
the media and we have to be more forth-
right and clearer about what we' ve learned
that's positive and what we've learned
that's negative," says McGee.
Gray-Felder agrees. ''There's a mistak-
en opinion that marketing and communi-
cations has a bit of hucksterism tinge to it,"
she says. "I'm in favor of foundations, no
matter their ideological bent, doing a more
aggressive job of reaching out to targeted
audiences. We' re one of the foundations
you will see doing more and more aggres-
sive communications. Our premise is com-
munication is essential to social change."
Taking Risks
One newcomer on the foundation
scene, the domestic branch of George
Soros' Open Society Institute (OSn, while
not espousing a left-wing ideological
vision, takes a very direct approach to rais-
ing the profile of its eclectic portfolio. ''1
think we are responding to a degree to the
concerns raised in the NCRP report,"
explains Gara LaMarche, OSI's director
of U.S. Programs. "We have put a lot of
emphasis on changing the debate on cer-
tain issues," he says, citing drug policy,
how people die, over-incarceration and
welfare reform's victimization of immi-
grants. "We' re obviously not trying to win
any popularity contests."
Soros believes foundations should use
their position to take risks, LaMarche
says. By supporting grantees who take
what amount to taboo positions in previ-
ously one-sided debates, OSI hopes to
alter the climate enough for others to take
the plunge. "We want company," he says.
The Soros strategy has worked, in
some cases being nearly as successful as
the right-wing foundations. It once was
forbidden to question the nation's war on
drugs, but thanks in large part to the work
of the Drug Policy Foundation-which
OSI has supported with $5.5 million over
three years-that orthodoxy has been chal-
lenged by state and federal judges, physi-
cians, academics, politicians of the left and
right, and even voters in Arizona and
California. It's no longer unheard of for
citizens and policymakers to wonder if
regulated legalization isn't a better solu-
tion, whether marijuana shouldn' t be used
for medicinal purposes or if treatment isn't
more important than interdiction.
Institution-Building Strategy
A handful of funders willing to place
themselves on the left side of the political
spectrum are having serious discussions
about how best to act on Covington's [md-
ings. But the task of replicating the conser-
vatives' institution-building strategy raises
financial and philosophical road blocks.
"I wouldn' t like a think tank that
CITY LIMITS
accomplishes great things with no democ-
ratic input," says Madeline Lee, the New
York Foundation's executive director. "A
progressive vision for this country
includes a great deal more citizen partici-
pation."
New World Foundation Executive
Director Colin Greer adds, "A true pro-
gressive transformation of America takes
authentic messages. You can't build a real
movement for social change on lies. That
doesn't bother the right."
At any rate, small progressive founda-
tions, even if they all worked together,
couldn't come up with $200 million to
spend on any single strategy such as think
tanks because they face so many other
demands. "It would have to come from
something, if not organizing, then from
much-needed services that are filling in
gaps that allow people to live," Greer says.
But for much less money than it would
take to build a Heritage Foundation-style
think tank, progressive funders could
strengthen connections between communi-
ty organizers and intellectuals, Greer says.
Policies developed out of activist think
tanks, then, would have built-in pertinence
to people working on the issues.
The Nathan Cummings Foundation is
funding NCRP's outreach around the
report, hoping to prompt some self-criti-
cism in the foundation world, says Special
Projects Director Jennifer McCarthy.
Covington is criss-crossing the country,
making presentations to foundation staffs,
funder associations and private donors.
"Foundations have an opportunity to
affect public policy, and we had best rise to
this challenge," explained Cummings
President Charles Halpern at a recent con-
ference in Honolulu.
Halpern says he envisions a small cen-
tral institution that reaches out to both
grassroots people and scholars who
believe that government has an important
role to play in American society. This
"think tank without walls" would bring
forth new ideas for the country.
"What Sally's report gives us is a
glimpse of the new model, and this is a
Jaguar sports car," Halpern added. Those
whose vision of the good society differs
from that of the conservatives should not
try to build a better sports car. "My vote
for the revolutionary design of the future is
not for another Jaguar, but instead for the
next generation of electric automobile, a
car that is fuel-efficient, non-polluting and
made of recyclable materials."
Problem is, the electric car has yet to
keep pace with the Chevy, much less the
Jaguar .
OCTOBER 1997
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THE CITI NEVER SLEEPS'
Mi

PIPEliNE i
,
Marie Runyon
was brilliant at
building Harlem.
Restoration. But
some questioned her
ability to manage it.
F
A Hard Fall in Harlem
An un-civil war on the board is tearing apart the Harlem
Restoration Project. A legendary activist learns the painful
truths of business. By Kathleen McGowan
M
arie Runyon knows how
to get into trouble.
Back when she was a
state Assemblywoman in
the early 1970s, she took
advantage of her right to visit prisons-by
showing up at midnight at Attica in 1975
to make sure the men in the box weren't
being abused by guards. She called notori-
ous slumlord Adonis Morfesis a "son-of-a-
bitch" to his face-in open court. And (in
only one of the many arrests on her rap
sheet) she alone refused to go quietly at the
Gulf War protest at the Cathedral of St.
John the Divine in 1991, forcing the police
to carry her off. She was 76 at the time.
For 20 years now, Runyon has been
saving buildings as executive director of
the Harlem Restoration Project, which she
founded with a couple of ex-cons as a
scrappy, never-say-die tenants' advocacy
group. It grew into a bona fide Harlem
heavyweight. Just two years ago, it was
considered a model nonprofit, managing
nearly two dozen buildings with a budget
in the millions, a successful and beloved
thrift store, and plans for a 96,OOO-square-
foot business incubator Runyon hoped
would help revitalize West
Harlem.
But trouble finally
caught up to Marie
Runyon.
In the wake of a nasty
dispute over her manage-
ment style, Harlem
Restoration's board split
apart and the agency has
crumbled. Runyon, an
aggressive 82-year-old
Southerner-one of the
most admired, and feared,
organizers in Harlem-has
always been a magnet for
criticism. But the current
fracas has threatened her
most enduring legacy:
Harlem Restoration's very
existence.
"We are all fist-in-the-
air people, so we don't
back down," observes
Jolie Ness, formerly the
agency's social services
director. "Everyone was
interested in defending
their own viewpoint, rather
tban the organization's
needs."
Colng Legit
Harlem Restoration
started out with little more
than altitude when it
opened in 1977. "We didn't
give a damn about the
politicians," says Runyon.
"We'd just go into any building that need-
ed our help." Runyon was widely
admired for her bravado, coordinating
tenants in buildings everyone else had
given up on, and scraping money togeth-
er for heat and repairs in some of the
worst buildings in Harlem with the help
of locals and the reborn ex-cons she has
always attracted. Eventually, Harlem
Restoration went legit, winning contracts
from the city to take over and stabilize
badly-run buildings under its 7a receiver-
ship program.
By the late 1980s, Harlem Restoration's
staff had organized more than 100 build-
ings, transferred a half-dozen others into
tenant ownership, and found temporary
jobs for some 500 ex -offenders. By the
early 1990s, the staff completed its trans-
formation. Runyon and Co. took advantage
of a glut of city-owned buildings, eventual-
ly taking responsibility for two dozen
apartment buildings. The organization won
two rehab projects financed through the
federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit
program and other housing contracts,
boosting the organization's annual budget
almost to-fold between 1991 and 1994. By
1994, the organization was managing 500
units, half of which housed formerly home-
less families.
"I never dreamed of being in the role of
landlord," says Runyon, laughing. "My
first arrests were in trying to stop evic-
tions. But little by little, here I was, man-
aging all these buildings."
Runyon certainly had a genius for get-
ting management contracts, but Harlem
Restoration, as an organization, wasn' t
able to keep up with the additional work,
say former staff members. "We needed
serious fiscal management to run things
properly," says Joseph Moore, who ran the
thrift store for five years. "Instead, there
was poor management and bad decisions.
In any management position, you have to
bend and work things out as a team, not as
a crusade."
Carbon Copies
While other housing organizations
were getting more professional, Harlem
Restoration stayed grass-rootsy and, as
even Runyon admits, inefficient.
"She insisted we make carbon copies,"
laughs former legal counsel Gwenerva
Cherry, "because she said the cost of
xeroxing was too high. This was in the
nineties!"
CITY LIMITS
"A computer would have helped," adds
Ness. "We had no typewriters, no faxes
either. Somebody was even going to give
me a computer, but getting permission [to
take itl was like pulling teeth."
The first sign of serious trouble came
in 1992, with a debacle over management
of the 250 apartments at 640 and 644
Riverside Drive. Harlem Restoration's
assistant director Dorothy Keller argued
vociferously against taking over the build-
ings. Ignoring Keller's misgivings about
the buildings' bad conditions and financial
problems, Runyon went ahead.
Within months, the unionized mainte-
nance men went on strike, accusing
Runyon of unilaterally slashing their pay
(Runyon denies this). An influential group
of tenants, angry that Runyon had not
delivered on promised improvements, lob-
bied HPD for a new administrator.
Runyon's contract was pulled after less
than a year.
Soon after, Harlem Restoration's board
hired a management consultant to restruc-
ture the organization. He recommended
that Runyon step down. On his advice, the
board fired her in March 1994. Four
months later, though, her supporters voted
her back in by a margin of one vote.
Exasperated, Keller quit. She was fol-
lowed by Moore, Cherry and eventually
much of the board. Runyon remained
steadfast. "Marie was out there waging a
war," says her friend and fellow activist
Reverend Robert Castle. "She'd take on
everybody."
But things at Harlem Restoration went
downhill quickly. Two chief financial offi-
cers came and went in a year, leaving
building accounts jumbled (like a $62,000
report for elevator repairs in a building
without elevators). In 1995, the formerly
profitable thrift shop lost nearly $20,000.
And an independent auditor hired by the
board criticized sloppy management.
"Our reporting left a lot to be desired,"
admits Runyon, arguing that the two finan-
cial executives she hired were simply not
up to the job. "I assume full responsibility
for that as executive director."
But scrupulous bookkeeping is essen-
tial when participating in the federal Low
Income Housing Tax Credit program,
which provides rehabilitation financing
and rent reserves. The reporting problems,
combined with Harlem Restoration's inter-
nal squabbling, began making funders ner-
vous.
''We increasingly became concerned
with staff turnover and board turnover,"
says William Frey, director of Enterprise
Foundation's New York office, which
OCTOBER 1997
administered the nonprofit's tax credit pro-
grams.
By fall 1996, at the insistence of HPD
and Enterprise, Harlem Restoration began
to get more help from other professional
building managers. Meanwhile, the orga-
nization attempted to regroup. To that end,
the board brought in an Ivy League-
trained management consultant, Elvin
Montgomery.
Within weeks, Montgomery had fired
five employees, suggested that Harlem
Restoration turn its thrift store into an
antique shop, and made numerous other
suggestions for improvements. He
impressed the board, which voted to hire
him as interim executive director, at the
same time asking Runyon to step down to
concentrate on fundraising.
She refused, and for a while the organi-
that the pro-Montgomery board members
had voted without a quorum and violated
the organization's by-laws. Their actions
"may cause irreparable harm if permitted
to stand," she concluded.
Runyon was restored to her position as
executive director. The three board mem-
bers resigned, but not before circulating a
scorching IS-page memo-drafted by
Montgomery-to, among others, officials
at HPD and Enterprise. Soon after, the city
canceled most of its contracts with the
organization, turning over 15 buildings to
other nonprofIts. The backers for the busi-
ness incubator also pulled out; the project
is now on hold.
PHcMlm. Manag.m.nt
"There are many instances in which a
powerful and charismatic leader can find it
IIMarie was out there waging a war.
She'd take on everybody."
zation featured dueling leaders. Then at
two meetings held December II and 17,
five members of the 16-member board met
and essentially staged a coup. Without a
quorum, they voted Montgomery in as per-
manent executive director and increased
his salary by two-thirds to $75,000 a year.
They also fired Runyon, barring her from
the premises.
The rest of the board struck back, call-
ing a special meeting four days before
Christmas. The dissenters didn't show up,
and the pro-Runyon faction fired
Montgomery and barred him from the
offices.
Then the struggle got even nastier.
Three members of the anti-Runyon fac-
tion sued Harlem Restoration to bring
Montgomery back, paralyzing the organi-
zation with a month-long injunction pre-
venting it from conducting all but routine
business. The three board members start-
ed a new bank account, paying
Montgomery and his new hires in part
with a donor's check that Runyon charges
they stole. The insurgents changed the
locks. Runyon's people changed them
back again. Montgomery says Runyon
stole his fIles; Runyon says he hid hers. It
all came to a head one evening in January
with what Runyon calls "a tussle"
between the two of them over some fIles.
The cops had to break them up.
Finally, in early February, Runyon's
backers prevailed, defeating their oppo-
nents' lawsuit. A civil court judge ruled
hard to mall age an ongoing, stable organi-
zation," says Joseph Stillman, partner at
the Conservation Company, which offers
management consulting services to non-
profits. "The most famous example is
Winston Churchill-a brilliant prime min-
ister as long as Britain was at war, but not
so brilliant at the management of a peace-
time nation."
Marie Runyon might well take this
example to heart, now that Harlem
Restoration has only five employees and
four buildings left. But she is intent on
keeping up the fight. In June she filed a
lawsuit against HPD, arguing that four of
the 15 buildings the city took back in fact
belong to Harlem Restoration. She is also
protesting the loss of the other buildings as
a violation of land-use guidelines.
Asked if she could see any bright side
to Harlem Restoration's troubles, Runyon
is uncharacteristically repentant. "Maybe I
have screwed up, maybe I have been bad
for the organization, bad for Harlem," she
says. "Maybe I'm the worst manager in the
world, maybe everybody hates me. Then
it's good I'm not such a prominent part of
what's happening now."
But then she pauses, thinking of a
more pleasant result of the last year's tri-
als. "Oh yes," she smiles widely, "and we
got rid of three terrible people on the
board of directors."
Kathleen McGowan is a Manhattan-
based freelance writer.

-4
First in a three-part series:
Cleaning HUD's House
Gates Avenue became a slum while Washington handed out
tax breaks to lantUords and looked the other way. Not any
more. Two thousand Bed-Stuy tenants have retaken their
homes-and sent the slumlords packing. By Andrew White
he history of American tax law is replete with
gifts to the moneyed classes couched in the
mantle of social kindness. Acres of high-tech
windmills dot the southeast California hills,
many clearly wrecked and inoperable, relics of
a late-1970s tax incentive to encourage invest-
ment in alternative power. The value of the
investment wasn't in the potential success of the operation so much
as in its decline-year after year, investors claimed massive
income tax deductions based on the depreciating value of their
windmills. When these wind farms failed, the only victims were
the landscape and the birds.
New York City's windmills are on Gates Avenue in Brooklyn,
in the form of huge, federally subsidized apartment blocks. Like
the Southern Californian boondoggles, these buildings have prcr
vided millions of dollars in tax shelter to the wealthy. But when
this operation failed, the victims were flesh and blood.
The Medgar Evers Houses apartment complex has nine build-
ings and nine front doors wide open to the night and day. The rear
doors with their blasted locks hang from hinges onto bleak, block-
long concrete yards.
These buildings, built in 1973, are remnants of a misbegotten
1960s Washington fantasy that envisioned adequate housing for
everyone in the United States. The private real estate development
industry was supposed to provide the means, financed with billions
of dollars in construction grants, mortgage subsidies and years of
steady, guaranteed income-and backed by investors lured with
lucrative tax shelters. By 1992, the original vision had fallen far
OCTOBER 1997
short, but even so there were 3.1 million units of federally subsi-
dized housing owned and managed by the private sector. And the
investors who made much of it possible were slashing billions of
dollars a year from their taxes.
On Gates Avenue, the tax shelter worked well for the landlords,
at least for a time. The limited partnership that bought the 315-unit
property in 1985, headed by Philip and Douglas Rosenberg and
Seymour Maslow of the downtown Brooklyn-based BPC
Management, has in 11 years distributed tax deductions of $11.5
million to the individual members of its small investment group,
according to annual filings with the federal Department of Housing
and Urban Development. Depending on the partners' individual
tax brackets, then, the deductions reduced their taxes by a total of
$3.5 to $4.5 million or more in taxes-all thanks to this one Bed-
Stuy housing development.
But the other kind of shelter BPC Management was supposed
to provide-homes for its tenants-did not work nearly so well. In
addition to the lost tax revenues, the government has spent about
$20 million on rent subsidies here since 1986. Yet for much of that
time the tenants have lived in poor housing laced with code viola-
tions, rats and backed-up sewage. Drug dealers took over the hall-
ways. Prostitutes worked the roofs and garages. Vandals trashed
the public spaces and elevators over and over again. Crackheads
smoked pipes and slept on grimy mattresses in the stairwells. On
the rooftops, hoods routinely plugged the cinderblock walls full of
shells and scattered casings across the tar. Year after year, HUD
audits and city inspection reports have documented a costly slum.
"In white-collar crimes, you have to see the victims. Otherwise
The tenants of
two sprawling
housing projects
took their land-
lords to court,
charging them
with racketeering
and mail fraud.
ThenHUD
moved in--and
the people of
Gates Avenue
took to the streets ~
to celebrate. ~
Ii!
::J
-
Legal Services
attorneys Rick
Wagner (right)
and Jim Provost
are 2-0 in
their RICO
suits against
slumlords.
-
it's never understood," says attorney Richard Wagner, director of
litigation for Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, which is rep-
resenting the Medgar Evers Houses Tenants Association in a suit
against the Rosenbergs, their firm, BPC Management, and their
partners. Thus far, of course, there is only the plaintiffs' allegation
of wrongdoing, much less proof of a crime. But the suit invokes the
federal Racketeering and Influence of Corrupt Organizations
(RICO) law to charge the owners with defrauding their tenants.
Under the statute, if they are victorious, the tenants could win triple
damages plus legal fees. And the landlord's business could be dis-
mantled. "Our clients have been damaged in a very real way,"
Wagner says. "They've lived miserable lives."
The owners vehemently contest Legal Services' lawsuit and
blame the substandard housing conditions on HUD's failure to pro-
vide adequate operating income and rehabilitation capital. But this
summer, after an intense tenant organizing drive sparked a
reassessment by HUD officials, the federal government took pos-
session of Medgar Evers Houses and replaced BPC with a new
management company.
For now, the landlords still hold title to the property. But their
bill may soon come due. Even if the Rosenbergs, Maslow and their
partners can block the suit, HUD is moving toward foreclosure-
raising the specter of much more serious fmancial woes: if the lim-
ited partnership loses title to the property, its members will have to
pay the IRS all of the millions of dollars in taxes they've avoided
since 1985.
"Jesus, they're dead," says Scott Langan, vice president of
ARCO Management, the HUD contractor that has taken over man-
agement of Medgar Evers, as he looks over the owners' financial
audit. "I wouldn't be sleeping at night."
d
arlene Wortham's youngest daughter, 18-year-old
Lashawna, was mugged last year in the hallway outside
their Medgar Evers apartment early one evening.
Wortham gestures dismissively toward her door when she recalls
the incident, just one more in a multitude. "We had fires on the
staircases, we had people living on the roof, doing drugs in the
stairwells. We had people killed in an elevator and in the hallway."
Life without security in a dangerous neighborhood is essen-
tially a life of unneighborly distrust, says Charlotte Rodgers, who
along with scores of others has raised a family here and persist-
ed well into her third decade on the block.
Lately she has emerged as a leader of the
Medgar Evers tenants. Like many other ten-
ants, she says that for years, management
has responded to tenant complaints with
promises of repairs that were rarely ful-
filled. "With the buildings looking in the
condition they look, people feel they can do
anything here," she says.
By all accounts there are thousands of
competently-run housing projects around the
country where the tax shelter has proven use-
ful for financing low-income housing.
Medgar Evers Houses is one of 585 New
York City housing developments-with
some 260,000 tenants-participating in the
federal project-based Section 8 rent subsidy
program, and many of them include tax shel-
ter provisions. Tenants in these buildings pay
a percentage of their income in rent, and the
federal government pays the rest, usually
giving the landlord at least the fair market
value of the apartment.
Still, in New York City alone there are 38
developments containing 5,811 apartments that are on a list for
possible termination from the program because their Section 8 con-
tracts expire this year and, according to HUD, their owners have
failed to comply with housing quality standards.
Just this year, HUD has taken legal possession of 13 develop-
ments in New York City and is nearing foreclosure on three of
them. Last month the agency took title to a 160-unit project in
Bedford-Stuyvesant. It's part of a new crusade by HUD Secretary
Andrew Cuomo to clean up contracting practices. By comparison,
in all of last year the agency took such action against only 30 pro-
jects nationwide.
What happens on Gates Avenue is important to tenants all over
the country. It could prove to be a model for the removal of failing
owners and the transfer of properties to new ones-nonprofit com-
munity groups, for instance, or tenants themselves.
In one sense, Medgar Evers has already established itself as a
model project: tenants, organizers and public interest lawyers have
taken on the slumlords-and beaten them into the ropes.
k
ali Muhammadu-Ndoye is a tenant organizer with the
Community Service Society, a century-old nonprofit
advocacy and social service organization based in
Manhattan. She lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Like her, many resi-
dents of the low-slung blocks of brick rowhouses and brownstones
that dominate the neighborhood have known for years about Gates
Avenue, its slumlords, gunslingers and drug hoods. Gates was
''The Canyon," with its six-story behemoth tenements and gaping
concrete plazas. Others called it "the Gates of Hell." Everyone
knew it was not a happy place to live.
One day last fall, Muhammadu-Ndoye and her CSS colleagues,
Brent Sharman and Hazel Young-Lao, along with a crew of volun-
teers from local Bed-Stuy groups, walked onto the avenue and
started banging on people's apartment doors. To make their task of
organizing a tenants association less daunting, they chose to begin
at the smaller development across the street from Medgar Evers,
the 160-unit Gates Avenue Houses. This project is not owned or
managed by the Rosenbergs and BPC, but like Medgar Evers it
was in bad condition. Gates Avenue Houses was run by a national l
company, RPS Management, owned by the California-based spec- ~
ulator Allan S. Bird, who runs a massive operation with nearly 100 i
federally supported projects around the country. ~
CITVLlMITS
"We started cold with no information about the people or the
owners," says Muhammadu-Ndoye. ''We just started knocking on
doors and asking people, 'Do you want change?'"
Before long, scores of tenants were turning out for meetings every
other week around the comer at the New Bed Stuy Boxing Center,
home to a generation of young fighters including former heavyweight
champ and Olympic silver medalist Riddick Bowe. "Bed Stuy Do or
Die," the sign reads above the door. "We Do, We Don't Die." Inside
the gym, beside the roped-in ring and the heavy bags, dozens of ten-
ants and their children gathered. During the early meetings the ten-
ants were distrustful, but they turned out in force nonetheless to trade
stories and listen to the organizers outline their plan.
''We told everyone, you have a voice here. No one else is more
important than you," recalls Muhammadu-Ndoye. ''Whatever the
future of this development is, the tenants are going to have a say."
Every building was assigned an organizer. Every floor would
choose two floor captains, and the captains would elect an execu-
tive committee for the tenants association. And every tenant would
document conditions in their homes.
Setting up such a structure, the organizers explained, would
help the tenants take advantage of an opportunity near at hand:
Brooklyn Legal Services, with its proven track record against neg-
ligent federally subsidized landlords and managers, was ready to
step in and help. If the tenants could prove they had a case, the
attorneys would take it to Federal District Court and demand the
landlord's ouster.
" .. ick Wagner is a lunatic!" growls Gilbert Wallach,
one of the investor-owners of Medgar Evers
Houses, at the first mention of his legal nemesis.
Most who know Wagner, the bespectacled gray-bearded director of
litigation for East Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, would
concede the point. Wagner is an emphatic and non-stop speaker,
never short of expletives, whose universal insult is to call someone
a goniff, Yiddish for "thief." He's a hardball tenant rights attorney,
yet he joyfully cuts down "lily-white liberals" who argue against
summary eviction for those tenants who break house rules.
Wagner worked at William Kunstler's radical legal redoubt, the
Center for Constitutional Rights, through the early 1970s, and then
became a founding partner of Stolar, Alterman, Wagner & Boop,
where he worked from 1975 through the early 1980s. "We were
going to be a progressi ve legal collective, but
our political standards lowered as our fees
increased," he recalls with a smile and a slap
at the top of his desk. "It's hard to say no to
a heroin dealer who drops seventy-five grand
on your desk." He left to join Legal Services
in 1985. Today his headquarters is an aban-
doned bank president's office on the edge of
East New York, furnished with hand-me-
downs. A tattered couch is stacked high with
case ftles; his New York Law School diplo-
ma adorns one wall and a portrait of George
Washington another. ''The first revolution-
ary," Wagner explains. He salvaged the pic-
ture, it turns out, from a pile of garbage left
behind by the departed bankers.
Wagner and his colleague, Jim Provost-
wiry, long-haired and decidedly more sub-
dued-first conceived of using the RICO law
in 1994, when they discovered they could
I,. charge the owners of one especially bedrag-
:5 gled East New York development with a
! long-term pattern of mail fraud. Every month
c for several years, the owners, in accordance
OCTOBER 1997
with their contract, had certified to HUD that each unit for which
they were requesting federal rent payment was in safe, decent and
sanitary condition. Wagner and Provost argued that these certifica-
tions were clearly fraudulent, considering the outrageously dilapi-
dated state of the housing development. Because the owners sent
the certification letters more than once-indeed, dozens of tirnes-
and plowed the resulting revenues back into their business, the
lawsuit charged that they fit the federal defmition of racketeers.
That meant they could be sued for triple damages, as well as the
dismantling of their organization, under the civil section of the
1970 RICO statute.
Legal Services won a knockout in the fITst round. The East
New York owners, stunned by the potential criminal implications
of Wagner's legal volley, immediately collapsed. They settled
with their tenants in early 1995 by turning over the deed to the
property at no charge. In exchange, Wagner and the tenants with-
drew the lawsuit.
A year later, Wagner and a group of tenants filed a RICO suit
against the landlord of one of the most crime-ridden federally-sub-
sidized housing projects in Brownsville. By summer, that owner,
too, was reeling. The company turned over the property's title to
HUD and paid Brooklyn Legal Services $150,000 in plaintiffs'
legal fees. The tenants dropped the suit. Wagner was 2 and O.
Last February, with the organizers and tenants in high gear at
Gates Avenue Houses, Wagner and Provost filed suit againstAilan S.
Bird, RPS Management, and their limited partnership. In April,
Federal District Judge David G. Trager granted a motion by the Gates
Avenue tenants to appoint a receiver. HUD quickly installed new
management and began its own legal maneuvers to take posses-
sion-and ultimately ownership-away from Bird. Last month,
HUD took title to the property. But this time, there has been no set-
tlement. The multimillionaire Bird is fighting back. In July, his attor-
neys sought to dismiss the lawsuit against their client, arguing that the
Gates Avenue rental assistance contract was with HUD, not the ten-
ants, so the tenants have no standing in court. To Wagner's delight,
the judge disagreed, ruling that the rent subsidies are intended to ben-
efit individual tenants; therefore, they have every right to sue.
"I never anticipate what a judge will think," Wagner says.
''There's something about the fumes given off by black polyester
that does something to a person's reasoning and conscience." But
the courts continue moving in his direction. The Bird case is head-
"Whatever the
future of this
development is,
the terumts are
going to have a
say, .. insists
organizer Kali
Muhammadu-
Ndoye (right).
Tenant leader
Charlotte
Rodgers (left)
moved here in
1974.
...
HUD could have
dealt with these
owners years
ago, argues
organizer Angela
Hope Weusi.
The New Bed
Stuy Boxing
Center has been
a base for the
tenants.
\fl'
ed for trial, and the tenants hope to win damages to create a rehab
reserve fund-as much as $2 million.
l
ast spring, with HUD in possession of Gates Avenue Houses,
federal insurance money poured in. The receiver, ARCO
Management, hired armed security guards for round-the-
clock patrols and put up floor-to-ceiling cast iron fences inside the
lobbies with buzzers and intercoms-the first the tenants had seen
in years. The drug dealers moved out fast. Then ARCO began
repairing code violations throughout the apartments. Graffiti dis-
appeared and lights stayed on in the hallways. Exterminators went
after the rodents. Maintenance has kept the chronically battered
elevators functioning-and clean of the stench of urine.
Meanwhile, Muhammadu-Ndoye's crew of tenant organizers
grew to 13. They began passing out flyers across the street in the
much larger, nine-building Medgar Evers complex.
''Muhammadu came through the building knocking on every
door. She said' Are you tired of living like this?' and told us about
their organizing across the street," recalls Darlene Wortham.
People were ready to listen. "Out of 315 apartments, I'd say we
had 150, 160 people meeting at the boxing arena with seats all the
way to the door."
Like at Gates, distrust was in the air at the first meetings, she
adds, explaining that previous efforts to organize the tenants led
only to broken promises from management. "We were tired of peo-
ple coming here and saying we're going to do this and do that, and
then nothing changed," she says.
This time, though, tenants could see the changes across the
street and they wanted the same kind of security force. The leaders
invited Wagner to a meeting one Thursday evening, and by early
May, 181 of the tenants had signed on to a new RICO lawsuit-
this one against the Rosenbergs, BPC Management and their lim-
ited partners.
Wagner also ftled a motion asking Judge John Gleeson to appoint
a receiver at Medgar Evers, citing the 1,595 housing code violations
listed on city inspection records. The landlords and their investors
backed off immediately. In exchange for a three-month delay of
court proceedings and "no admission of fault or liability, no negati ve
inference of any sort," they agreed to have ARCO take over man-
agement of their property. Wallach, one of the limited partners but
also the Rosenbergs' attorney, signed the project over to HUD's con-
trol in August, and the federal government
officially took possession last month.
Maintenance men arrived only to find
themselves confronted with a shotgun
shoved in their faces as they walked across
one of the yards, recalls ARCO's Scott
Langan. The gunman said they were definite-
ly in the wrong place-and the crew took his
word for it. It turned out that drug dealers,
ousted from Gates Avenue Houses and newly
installed at Medgar Evers, were not eager to
move again. Within weeks, however, ARCO
deployed a security force of 63 men to patrol
round the clock. The major dealers moved
out, though tenants say some minor ones are
still operating from their apartments.
Because there are no functioning doors
or intercoms at Medgar Evers, HUD is
using its mortgage insurance fund to cover
more than $330,000 a month on security. By
the end of October, ARCO plans to have all
the doors secured, video cameras in place
and cast iron entryways like those across the
street. At that point they plan to cut the
security bill to a slightly more modest $84,000 a month.
Meanwhile, foreclosure proceedings are pending, but HUD
refuses to comment on the case. "Our legal staff has said that all
issues under litigation should not be discussed," says agency
Spokesman Adam Glantz.
b
PC's Douglas Rosenberg also refuses to comment, but
Wallach insists the huge amount of money HUD is now
pouring into the development is proof the problems at
Medgar Evers were never really the owners' fault.
"Give me that amount of money and I can make any terrible
project look like Park Avenue," he argues. "If you don' t give me
the money, I can't do the work .. .. We applied for increases each
year since 1992, and never received a single one."
Langan, whose fum contracts with HUD to manage troubled
properties in 22 states, draws a different lesson. ''There certainly is
not enough money in the rent roll for the kind of security we need,"
he agrees. "But we would not have needed that security if tenant
relations had been good .... Along the way these owners forgot the
single most important thing: run the building as a building. Don't
. run it as a tax shelter."
As for the rampant vandalism, Muhammadu-Ndoye says expe-
rienced landlords know that when they let a building fall apart,
families who live there often fall apart as well--especially the
younger tenants. "A fish in a toilet bowl too long may forget he's
a fish and think he's waste," she says. ''The conditions have been
so debilitating. People rise to their surroundings."
Indeed, it has been a long slow slide into the mire for Medgar
Evers. Ten years after the project was built, the first owner, a now-
defunct nonprofit corporation, was $4 million overdue on interest
payments against a $9.5 million mortgage. HUD was prepared to
foreclose.
Congress had just signed off on the 1981 tax reform with its
lucrative new tax shelter that made it more profitable than ever
before for private investors to buy into low-income housing. And
Fred Brown, leader of the black Republicans in New York City,
was using his connections in the Reagan administration to match
investors with troubled HUD housing projects--earning finders' 15
!
fees from private sector dea1makers. i:
Brown hooked up with Brooklyn real estate broker Philip ~
Rosenberg, who agreed to sell shares to investors to purchase the is
CITY LIMITS
defaulted property. The investors would fInance repairs, and
Rosenberg would get a middleman's fee to oversee the operation.
But it took a couple of years to move the plan through HUD and
by 1985, Congress was ready to change the tax laws again-and
possibly eliminate the tax shelter that made the deal so attractive.
"Phil Rosenberg had retained a finn of accountants who were
going to sell out this project for four, or four and a half million,"
Wallach recalls. "Unfortunately, because of the time lapse ... we
were compelled to close in November 1985. Nobody knew what
the new tax law was going to be, and therefore nobody was pre-
pared to make investments."
Instead of backing out, Rosenberg, Wallach and a few others
decided to put their own money to work, gambling the tax shelter
would still pan out. They bought shares totaling $1.1 million, and
borrowed an additional $9()(),000 to cinch the agreement with
HUD. The partnership assumed responsibility for the previous
owner's defaulted mortgage, Wallach says-with the proviso that
HUD would forgive the $4 million in delinquent interest payments.
Congress was kind: the limited partnership was grandfathered
in under the old tax law and received the tax break. But by the early
1990s their money had run out, Wallach says; the $3.9 million rent
roll-$2.4 million of it in federal subsidies, as of 1993--didn't
cover operations, he argues. Then, Wallach says, the roof came
down-at least in a fIgurative sense. They believed they had an
explicit agreement with HUD to reinvest a portion of their mort-
gage payment in a rehab reserve fund. But HUD used the money
to payoff the fIrst owner's delinquent interest debt-instead of
using it for repairs. "How could it not be a wreck?" he says today.
"Millions were in effect taken out of the budget."
HUD officials disagree on the terms of the agreement, but
refuse to comment further. The dispute is now in the Washington
courts, held up pending the RICO lawsuit Wagner and the tenants
fIled in Eastern District Court in Brooklyn.
Yet while the owners claim they have no responsibility for pay-
ing off the old owner's defaulted interest debt, they still count the
full value of that debt on their balance sheet, using it to their ben-
efIt at tax time by increasing the amount of income they can shel-
ter from the IRS.
b
usinessmen are, after all, in low-income housing to
make money. "It was HUD's responsibility to have reg-
ular monitoring of the sites where
they provide landlords millions of dollars in
subsidy," says Angela Hope Weusi, one of
the volunteer organizers working the Gates
Avenue strip and founder of Long Life
Information Service, a Bedford-Stuyvesant
group that places developmentally disabled
young adults in jobs. "They failed to make
sure the landlords were not exploiting the
people who live there."
The proof is in lengthy HUD inspection
reports from each year of the 1990s, which
detail extensive repair problems in the mas-
sive Medgar Evers complex. For years, the
agency put off intervention, prodding the
landlords for improvements, criticizing their
management-and approving their rent sub-
sidies month after month.
But now there are signs of a clean-gov-
ernment revolution underway at HUD,
thanks to the demands of the Republican-
~ controlled Congress-and HUD Secretary
~ Andrew Cuomo's shape-up or ship-out agen-
:3 da. Success may be a step toward higher
OCTOBER 1997
office for Cuomo: he is a top prospect to beAl Gore's running mate
in the year 2000.
Cuomo has established a new HUD enforcement office in col-
laboration with the Justice Department, based in New York and
headed by a top FBI official. The office is reportedly ferreting out
abuse by Section 8 landlords. At the same time, Congress has tight-
ly restricted rental assistance programs in a year when thousands
of rent subsidy contracts signed in the 1970s and '80s are expiring.
Every expert in the fIeld has a different opinion about what this
means in terms of tenant empowerment. Will management compa-
nies with platinum reputations-like ARCO--become HUD's
owners of choice in the future? Or will nonprofIts and tenants be
given the resources to collaborate with one another and build true
local power-with no profIts sucked out of the rent rolls?
Medgar Evers tenants are hopeful they will gain permanent
power. The organizers are providing them with leadership training.
"I always envisioned this as co-ops," says Darlene Wortham. But
she and many of her fellow tenants say they have their doubts,
given the huge size of the troubled project. Mostly, they hope HUD
will pay for necessary repairs. And they want to win some money
in the lawsuit to set aside for the future.
"hopefullY HUD won't get into the same trou-
ble they did before, allowing managers to
get away with bureaucratic excuses," says
Weusi. "When the people get self-determination, that ' s when
things will change."
But for the one thousand or more tenants who turned out for an
all-day festival on September 13, the change is already worth ebul-
lient sweet celebration. A children's chorus performed gospel
songs in the street. A dozen barbecues piled up the chicken, hot
dogs and burgers. Political raps set the crowd alight.
The change in people's lives is elemental. "I like the feeling of
walking down the stairs in the morning," says Charlotte Rodgers,
a Medgar Evers tenant leader who works in city government. "I
like coming home in the evening, not having to step allover peo-
ple in the hallways hanging out. When I go to the store, it feels like
people are a little more alive.
"It wasn' t like that when we started. They did not believe
anything could happen. They did not believe we could get rid
ofBPC."
This article was
funded in part by
the Twentieth
Century Fund
and produced in
collaboration with
WNYCNews.
"The Canyon" is
secure once again:
the new manage-
ment company at
Medgar Evers
Houses is spending
hundreds of thou-
sands of dollars on
security-and the
dealers have
moved out.
--
Q---
Welfare reform in the 1990s has been about "reforming" the people who get pub-
lic benefits, making them take responsibility, making them job ready. It has not
addressed the more traditional definition of good-government reform: making the
system more effective, more efficient, more responsive.
This summer, LAURBN GROVBR, a Cornell University student interning at the
office of Public Advocate Mark Green, took on the deceptively simple task of help-
ing one welfare client smooth out a few minor bureaucratic problems. She and the
client, Richard Vessells, ended up spending their whole summer on the project.
What follows are excerpts from Grover's journal. They tell a revealing story about
a bureaucracy for which true reform is not even on the agenda.
Poor licbard's Ilmanac
JURE 3: Today I learned about Richard's case. He is a full-time
student, pursuing an Associate degree in communications at
Borough of Manhattan Community College and working part-time
in the admissions office. He is also homeless, living with friends
temporarily and applying to the New York City Housing Authority
(NYCHA) for an apartment.
Richard is on Home Relief and receives a grant of $201 a
month. A government scholarship covers the cost of his tuition, his
office job covers books, and he is eligible for Food Stamps, but so
far has been unable to get them. He depends on the public assis-
tance money to meet most of his daily expenses. But last week
,Richard was dropped from the rolls.
JURE 5: It took four phone calls over two days to reach
Richard's caseworker at the Human Resources Administration
(HRA). When I did, I learned Richard's benefits were discontin-
ued due to "a failure to recertify." A letter asking him to come in
for a face-to-face interview was sent to his city-assigned post
office box. Richard did not see it in time. The post office is miles
from where Richard is staying and far from school. Since the trip
can take one to two hours out of his school day, Richard tries to
do it only once a week.
By the time Richard saw the HRA letter, his benefits had been
cut off. The only way to get his benefits reinstated will be to get a
"fair hearing" from HRA.
Richard also told me that his NYCHA housing application
was held out of the queue because a form was missing. After
three phone calls to different departments, I found people at
NYCHA familiar with Richard's case. Still, it took a half dozen
more phone calls to finally ascertain that NYCHA needed
Richard to take a drug test before it would put him on the list.
Richard attempted to get the test done, but he was turned away
for reasons his health center doctor would not explain.
JURE 9: I called HRA to schedule a fair hearing for Richard. I
tried three different numbers before I found the fair hearing line.
After getting a busy signal six different times throughout the day, I
got through and sat on hold for 45 minutes before someone picked
up. After giving the relevant information, I was told that schedul-
ing a hearing would take "at least eight weeks." After my protest,
the worker said that since Richard is homeless, he could have a
"next available" appointment-in five to six weeks.
I called around and was able to find the name of the director of
fair hearings. I then faxed him a letter on the public advocate's
behalf. This yielded an earlier date of June 26.
After calling Richard's doctor for the last three days, I heard
back. She told me Richard needed to bring in an "official form"
from NYCHA explaining why he needed a drug test. I called
Richard to tell him this; he said he brought this form to the health
center the first time, but the doctors wouldn't accept it. Assuming
it was no longer useful , Richard had thrown it away. I then called
NYCHA to ask if I could pick up another copy. I was told to
come in, so I went to NYCHA's office at 250 Broadway. After
waiting for an hour, I was told they couldn't give me anything
without Richard present.
JURE 10-0: I figured it would be a wise precaution to talk with
Richard's health center to be sure we were getting the appropriate
form. The medical director called me back to say that the center
needed the form and, incidentally, that it had to be dated the same
week the test was requested. The next day, I talked to NYCHA and
found out that Richard must have the test done by July 30th or his
housing application would be dropped.
JURE 16: I called Richard to explain that he needed the drug test
form from NYCHA stamped with the current date. He said he
would get it. Richard took the day off from work and spent most
of it at NYCHA waiting to get his form stamped.
JURE 19: Form in hand, Richard went to the health center to get
his drug test. There he learned he couldn't have the test done with-
out Medicaid-which he had lost when his public assistance ben-
efits were cut off. He made a new appointment for July 7th, cutting
close to NYCHA's July 30th deadline.
I received Richard's fair hearing notice and called his case-
worker to see if he could review his record beforehand. After being
transferred several times, I learned that his case had been trans-
ferred to someone else, though Richard had not been notified. The
CITY LIMITS
new caseworker told me that the record-which Richard is
allowed to see by law-was unavailable as it was being prepared
for the fair hearing.
JUlIE 26: Today Richard had his fair hearing. He had already
been waiting for an hour when I arrived at 80 Centre Street at 9:30
a.m. We waited for another hour before being called into a set of
side chambers with about 15 or 20 others. A state Department of
Social Services representative informed Richard and the rest of the
group that the welfare center hadn't provided enough evidence to
justify dropping them from the rolls. Richard's benefits were
ordered to be restored within 10 business days.
JULy 2: Richard misplaced his public assistance identification
card, which he needs to withdraw benefits and access his post
office box. I called his new caseworker. This time it took five calls
to get her on the line. She told me that to get a new card, Richard
would first have to go to the income maintenance center on the
Lower East Side, and then to a midtown office to pick it up. She
then said she would give him an appointment, but when she
checked her computer, she saw his case was still closed and
refused. I explained that he had won a fair hearing decision and his
benefits would be restored shortly. She said she would not see him
until her computer said his case was open.
Meanwhile, Richard's housing situation had become dire. His
friend had asked him to leave as soon as possible.
JULy 8: I spoke to Richard, who told me the doctor was not at
the health center yesterday, the day of his appointment. So he is
still without the test NYCHA needs. I called the health center
myself and made a new appointment for July 11.
Richard started classes again, from 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through
Thursday. He is now bouncing around almost nightly, staying with
friends, relatives, and church members, trying to avoid the shelter
system until he can get a place of his own.
JULy 10: I left several messages with Richard's doctor, telling
her that his Medicaid still had not been restored, but I hoped she
would do the test anyway. She called me back to remind me that
the NYCHA form he had would no longer be valid-it was now
two weeks out of date. I told her I couldn' t believe she would
force Richard to go back to NYCHA simply to get his form
stamped again. I pleaded with her and finally I got an an assur-
ance that she would do the test with the form Richard had already
fought so hard to get.
JULy II: Richard finally got his test, but learned he could not
pick up the results until he could prove that Medicaid would pay
the bill. This is not his only problem with the health system.
Richard is a diabetic and has been unable to get his prescriptions
filled. He is running very low on the pills he relies on to control
the disease and is worried.
JULy M: It has been more than two weeks since Richard's hear-
ing and his benefits still remain in limbo. The new caseworker has
been extremely difficult to reach. Both Richard and I called her
several times a day for the last four days without response. Finally,
I got her on the phone and she informed me that Richard would
have to come in for a face-to-face interview to get his benefits
restored. "And if he doesn't come in on the date and time he was
assigned, I will remove him again," she warned me.
JULy 23: Richard took another day off from work and school to
go to the interview. Finally, his benefits were restored-a month
OCTOBER 1997
after his fair hearing. He then went to the health center and picked
up his negative drug test results. His application for NYCHA is
now complete.
JULy 28: Richard has been notified that he must work 20 hours
a week under the city's Work Experience Program (WEP) in order
to maintain his benefits. He is now attending school full-time and
working 15 hours a week in the admissions office. Still, he must
put in his workfare hours. I made some calls and found that if the
admissions office can give him enough hours, he can work there to
fulfill his WEP requirements. Further, the city is required by state
law to give him an assignment that does not interfere with school.
Richard had not been told about these options.
JULy 29: Richard is going to try and get a letter from the col-
lege stating that he can work in the admissions office for the
required number of hours.
I also wrote a letter of reference on his behalf to NYCHA's
"correspondence unit." It is a long shot. There are some 340,000
families and individuals waiting for apartments. And Richard has
been told informally he will have to enter the shelter system to ben-
efit from the priority NYCHA gives the homeless. Still, Richard
remains hopeful, attending school and eagerly awaiting word
about an apartment.
Richard Vessel/s,
a homeless student
and WEP worker,
had to navigate
a bureaucratic
maze in order to
apply f or a city
apartment.
THIS WAS GOING TO BE THE YEAR THE BRONK DEMOCRATS GOT IT
TOOHHER. BUT LIKE THE PARTY MACHINERY CITYWIDE, THE COUNTY
OPERATION GROUND ITS GEARS IN THE STARTING BoK-AND LOST BIG.
BY GLENN
THRUSH
he cheers were bleeding onto the pavement in
front of the South Bronx Regular Democratic
Club on primary night, but they were only for Tmo
Martinez.
Inside the club, under the faded U.S. and Puerto
Rican flags, a few old men slurped their Maltas and
watched Martinez and the Yankees on a small color TV.
The political sachems who had spent their day working
out of the club avoided the inside like a suicide scene. It
was 9:30 and they' d been beaten up, so they slackened
their ties, muttered their morose jokes and worried their
Marlboros down to the butt. Everyone except Paul Mejias.
Mejias, a former city elections commissioner and the most sea-
soned of street operatives, was inside peeling poll results from
manila envelopes. With each bit of predictable bad news, his huge
mustache seemed to droop at a more pronounced angle, like an
upside-down horseshoe with all the luck running out of it.
When Mejias had seen enough, he lumbered out to the sidewalk
to summon the South Bronx regulars into the clubhouse for the
concession speech of soon-to-be ex-Councilman Federico Perez.
The candidate, appropriately enough, was nowhere to be found.
When the evening was over, the results were as follows: Pedro
G. Espada, 5,168; Federico Perez, 3,445; Luis Dejesus, 2,243.
Perez, a clubhouse old-timer who ran a low-octane campaign, was
the only incumbent in the City Council to be kicked out of office
during this year's primary season.
The landslide victory of 23-year-old Pedro Gautier Espada, the
scion of a nonprofit empire founded by his politically ambitious
father, was a footnote in the dailies-but it sent a seismic shock
through South Bronx politics.
For starters, it puts the Espada political clan back into power
after being routed by the county Democratic organization last year.
Second, it points up the fact that Ramon Velez-who happens
to be Rudolph Giuliani's highest proftle Bronx supporter and the
man for whom Ed Koch coined the term "poverty pimp"-allowed
his close friend Perez to be trounced, encouraging political chaos
on turf Velez once controlled with an iron fist. It could be an indi-
cation of just how well Giuliani's divide-and-conquer policy is
working on Democrats in poor neighborhoods.
But most importantly, the race obliterates the hyped-Up fiction
that Bronx Democratic boss Roberto Ramirez had succeeded in ful-
filling his promise to re-establish a unified county political machine.
''This whole Bronx unity thing was something which was held
up to the world and now everybody knows it was bullshit," says a
source in the Perez campaign. "There is no Bronx unity, it's just
every man for himself, as usual."
The beneficiaries of the renewed chaos are the Espadas, who
have forged a Little Machine that Could. On September 9, it
whipped the Big Machine that Wouldn' t, wielding the same bag of
tricks that slum power brokers have used for years. The Espada
campaign was staffed almost exclusively by employees of his
father's fmancially-troubled health care empire-and bankrolled
almost entirely by its staff, including clerks, receptionists and
maintenance workers. With that cash, Espada was able to pay his
"volunteers" an astounding $100 to hand out palm cards.
In the South Bronx, where almost every politician uses a non-
profit community-based organization as a base of political opera-
tions, the Espadas have created the most tightly-knit and efficient
political operation seen in years. It is this strength, coupled with the
county machine's failure to recognize it, that has put the Espadas
back on the political map.
Now they are planning their assault in the state elections next
year, in all likelihood running candidates against Ramirez allies
state Senator David Rosado and Assemblyman Ruben Diaz, Jr.
At the beginning of this year, Ramirez had hoped to rule the
city. Next year he' ll sweat just to keep his hold on the South Bronx.
W
hat makes the defeat so bitter for the regulars is that 1997 was
supposed to be the Year of the Bronx.
In 1994, Roberto Ramirez, a close ally of Bronx Borough
President Fernando Ferrer, was elected to the party leadership. On
a pledge to unify a county Democratic machine shattered when
powerful county leader Stanley Friedman was convicted of corrup-
tion a decade ago. To signal his intentions, he hung a banner in the
county's headquarters that read: ''The Bronx Is United." His moti-
vation was part ego, part necessity. A tight county machine can c
command a bigger chunk of state and city discretionary budgets and ~
steer more contracts to neighborhood groups. It can also keep 1
infighting among the locals to a minimum, conserving precious . ~
political resources and staving off pesky insurgent candidates. ~
CITY LIMITS
In keeping with that philosophy, Ramirez attempted to quell
internecine fights, including his own long-running feud with
Congressman Jose Serrano, whom he beat to take the county lead-
ership. As a legislator, he lined up most of the borough's state reps
to support a landlord-backed bill requiring mandatory rent deposits
in Housing Court, a move that angered tenant groups but secured
real estate money for party campaigns.
All of this was in preparation for his grandest objective: getting
Freddy Ferrer to run for mayor.
Ramirez culled support for Ferrer by invoking the unifying
principle of self-interest. Whether Ferrer won or lost, he argued,
his run would open up the top of the borough's political ladder,
allowing almost every official to move up at least one rung. The
whole crew would gain increased access to borough hall patronage
slots. And if Ferrer actually won City Hall, the Bronx machine
would plumb an incredibly rich mine of jobs and contracts. It was
strictly win-win.
Ironically, he faced his toughest task lining up support in his
home turf of the South Bronx., arguably the most fractious 10
OCTOBER 1997
square miles in New York City politics. "At one time or the other,
everybody has been everybody else's brother and everyone else's
enemy," says City Councilman Israel Ruiz, a longtime Ramirez foe
who unsuccessfully opposed Ferrer for borough president in this
year's primary. "Every time you see a political fight up here, you
have to keep in mind that there's usually an economic reason
behind it. Politics and business are indistinguishable and that's
what accounts for all the fights."
Ramirez has exhibited a profound understanding of the money-
politics nex.us, linking Bronx legislators to new donors who have
pitched in $2 million for his candidates. Through a combination of
finesse and arm-twisting, ("A lot of this has been done with Krazy
Glue," he conceded to The New York Times earlier this year) he
lined up almost every leader in the borough behind Ferrer-with
the notable exception of Ramon Velez, who cut an endorsement
deal with Giuliani.
On the basis of this performance, Ramirez has been touted as
the architect behind what might be the first great minority-run
county political machine in city history. But citywide perceptions
Pedro G. Espada,
the 23-year-old
scion o/his
family 's political
machine, shocked
the Bronx County
regulars with
a Primary Day
landslide.
-
City Councilman
Federico Perez
ran a lackluster
and underfunded
campaign. His
crushing defeat
puts his ally,
Senator David
Rosado (left), in
peril next fall.
are always tempered by Bronx reality.
"Wben you're in an empty room and someone whispers, it
sounds like a cannon shot," explains poLitical consultant Norman
Adler. "The Bronx was an empty room and Roberto whispered."
fo
e fight with the Espadas is the only battle the leader has cho-
sen to answer with force rather than talk.
The whole feud began with a double-cross. In early 1996,
Hector Diaz was vacating his assembly seat to become county
clerk. For reasons that are not entirely clear, then-state Senator
Pedro Espada, Jr. (despite his name, he's Pedro G.'s father) agreed
to retire-but only if the party agreed to back his son for Diaz's
assembly seat. Espada shook hands on the deal but when the time
came for him to quit, he announced his intention to run again for
state senator. At fust, the ploy seemed to work. Young Pedro G.
was elected in the special election to fill the Diaz assembly seat.
But during the regular election last September, Ramirez flexed
his vengeful muscle, running City Councilman David Rosado
against Pedro, Jr. for the senate seat, and newcomer Ruben Diaz, Jr.
against Pedro G. for the assembly. The county machine's election
law apparatus was deployed and both Espadas were thrown off the
ballot for collecting bad petitions. Ramirez's candidates won.
Earlier this year, when Pedro G. prepared to run against Federico
Perez for Rosado's vacant City Council seat, Ramirez again brought
down the full weight of his lawyers and knocked him off the ballot.
At around the same time, press accounts reported that the U.S.
Attorney's Office and the city Department of Investigation were
looking into questionable Medicaid billing practices at the elder
Espada's health center. The clan's political future looked bleak.
That is, until Ferrer bowed out of the mayor's race and shat-
tered Ramirez's best-laid plans.
''When Freddy decided to back out I think it took a lot of stearn
out of them and they stopped working," said Pedro G. a few days
before the election, sitting in the cramped offices of the organiza-
tion he runs, Neighborhood Empowerment Center (NEC), on
149th St. "I think that is what has given us this chance."
A
t 10 a.m. on September 9-already five hours into his prima-
ry day routine-Pedro the Younger emerged from a Melrose
public school, flanked by a skinny fellow in a suit and a moun-
tainlike man with a camcorder slung around his sequoia neck. "I
got my lawyer. I got my muscle. I got my video camera, just in case
they try anything stupid."
Espada is a squat, bounding, dimpled 220-pounder with the
energy of a man utterly certain about his life's trajectory and his
father's willingness to support him. His hands are always moving:
jamming a renegade shirttail back into his slacks, patting his hair
back, pumping handshakes. His aw-shucks enthusiasm seems mis-
placed in the 1990s South Bronx. "We're going to run a hell of
race!" he said before darting off.
Early on Primary Day, it became apparent that Espada's people
were getting out the vote a lot more successfully than his oppo-
nents. The Espada volunteers wore bright red T-shirts and blustered
like cheerleaders. At P.S. 65, in the heart of Velez territory, 34-year-
old Nancy Santiago exhorted voters with shouts of "Vote Espada!"
and crammed the candidate's palmcard into every passing hand.
The nearby Perez table was occupied by two huddled seniors who
looked like they were trying to keep from catching cold, even
though the weather was in the mid-70s.
Still, Santiago's pep was the product of something a little more
potent than mere democratic fervor. "I like Espada and I think I
would have come out here for a few hours," she said. "But not for
the whole day, not without getting my $100 .... Do you think I'll get
my money?"
Espada admits to paying "a lot" of people the day-rate, but says
it's only fair considering the amount of work they put in. "These
CITY LIMITS
THE LORDS oj
BRUCKNER BOULEVARD
are people who worked for me from 5 in the morning to late at
night. We paid them sub-minimum wage."
On the opposite comer was another shouting Santiago with
even greater motivation. Mike Santiago (no relation to Nancy) was
a personable, extremely articulate Espada volunteer with a poten-
tial job attached to the end of his election day toil . A former mem-
ber of the elder Espada's senate staff, he was looking forward to
employment in Pedro G. 's council office.
For two weeks prior to the election, Santiago, a Vietnam vet
and American Legion member, canvassed the hallways of the near-
by Diego Beekman Houses, where he used to head up the security
detail. "I still have a lot of friends here," he said-and on cue two
of them, a twentyish couple, appeared. He shot over, hugging the
man and asking him if they had voted for Espada. "Yeah, man,
don't worry, we just did."
The Santiago double-team paid off. The poll site, located in
Mott Haven, was considered solid for Rosado and Perez, but it
broke for Espada two-to-one. Perez generally won the areas of the
district where Velez has the most influence, including Melrose and
southern Morrisania. But both Espada and ACORN-backed insur-
gent Luis Dejesus (see sidebar) made unexpected inroads there.
Espada, in tum, brought out large numbers of voters in the eastern
part of the district, especially in Hunts Point and Sound view, where
Perez showed poorly.
The Sound view connection was especially important because
Espada's father employs 400 people at the Soundview Health
Center on the edge of the neighborhood. At P.S. 93 , the Espadas'
most reliable polling place, Sandra Love, a vice president of the
health center, dispensed fried chicken legs and cups of Coke to
anyone who wanted some-even her opponents' canvassers.
OCTOBER 1997
talking about
to"" "poyerty
of IIOnprofits
Hlllts Point . ~
hundreds of
Bronx
yo_. though he is a
"I know this neighborhood. This is where lived for many
years," she said, neglecting to mention that she had been kicked
off the local school board for failing to disclose her true residence
in Mt. Vernon, just over the Westchester border. Her house is only
a few miles away from the split-level owned by her boss Pedro,
Jr., who maintains a "part-time" residence in suburban
Mamaroneck.
Love and many other Espada employees also filled the cam-
paign's coffers. A City Limits analysis of Espada's contribution
records showed that at least $23,000 of the $39,000 in reported
contributions came from employees--<lr relatives of employees-
who work in one of the Espada family's nonprofits.
Executives gave between $700 and $1,000. But even lower-
level employees made considerable contributions. Brenda Alverio,
a Soundview receptionist, forked over $700; a clerk named Lydia
Rivera gave $500, and Pedro G.'s secretary at the Neighborhood
Empowerment Center contributed $700.
The candidate bristled at any notion that using employees in
such a way was improper. "No one's forcing them to do this,"
Espada said. "1 love these people. These are people that are very
close to my family. Of course they would support me."
That may be so, but the Espadas have blurred the already thin
line between running a service organization and a permanent cam-
paign office. NEC, run by Pedro G., is supposed to be a neighbor-
hood nonprofit, but the place looks every bit like a campaign
office, with stacks of campaign literature everywhere and a box of
Espada-for-Council hair combs. The sign above the door has the
organization's name on it, but the words "Pedro G. Espada,
Executi ve Director" are at least twice as big. The front door is still
emblazoned with seal of the New York State Senate, a relic from
_I
ACORN-based
insurgent Luis
Dejesus scored
more than 2,000
votes, many of
them from first-
time voters.
the days when his father served in Albany and compiled one of the
worst attendance records of any legislator.
And if Espada employees' money flows freely into the cam-
paign, it doesn't seem to find its way so readily to the state
Department of Taxation and Finance.
City Limits has learned that last October the state assessed a lien
on the Soundview Health Center, citing $413,000 in back payroll
taxes that were supposed to have been deducted from employees'
checks each week. Since then, Pedro, Jr. has paid back about
$43,000 of the debt.
''The bottom line is that we had a former fiscal person who had
not been paying payroll taxes," explained the elder Espada. He
says he is suing the staffer, whom he refused to name. "We have a
plan to pay the balance .. .. But to me, at this point, that's water
under the bridge."
R
amon Velez created the model for the Espadas' profitable non-
profit political operation. Velez, who possesses a Rottweiler
temper and a wrecking-ball belly, has for 30 years run an empire
of housing and social service operations based out of the Hunts Point
Multi-Service Center. The center grosses $22 million a year,
almost 99 percent of it from government grants and reimburse-
ments. Twenty of the employees make more than $50,000 a year.
He pays his comptroller $160,000 and his accountant $110,000.
According to press accounts, Velez has personally profited from
his charitable work by establishing for-profit companies-Ravel
Associates, Ltd., a real estate firm, among them-to work hand-in-
glove with his nonprofits on various development projects .
Officially, he pays himself no salary for running Hunts Point
Multi-Service; he does, however, collect $219,600 a year in
"deferred compensation." His son Ramon, Jr. pulls down $77,200
a year as director of the South Bronx Community Development
Corp., which runs senior citizen and low-income housing.
For years, Velez has used the organization as a private campaign
army-a tactic that has been emulated by virtually every other
elected official in the borough. He doesn't need to coerce employ-
ees and tenants to vote for the candidates he backs. They do so
because he provides jobs in a neighborhood where they're scarce
and creates safe shelter in communities that have little. "He's not as
active as he used to be, but he still probably controls a total of
maybe 3,000 voters," says a former Hunts Point Multi-Service
employee. "In a neighborhood where you get like 7,000 people
coming out for an election, that's a substantial amount. Plus he's got
the client lists of all his health care facilities. He's got senior cen-
ters. And he mobilizes all the tenants in the buildings he runs."
Velez served as a councilman in the 1970s, but he has concen-
trated most of his efforts in the last years on getting his
friends-most of them members of the South Bronx Regular
Democrats-elected. Federico Perez is a Velez pal. Hector Diaz,
the longtime assemblyman and current county clerk, is a Velez pro-
tege, as is former Councilman Raphael Casteneira-Colon, who was
kicked out of office after being convicted of pocketing money that
was meant for his staff's paychecks.
At the moment, his most powerful political progeny is David
Rosado, a former Hunts Point Multi-Service employee who has used
Velez's base as a springboard for election to the Assembly, the City
Council and, most recently, the State Senate. Rosado, who is District
Leader in the 74th Assembly helped run Perez's campaign.
CITY LIMITS
Despite his friendship with and support of Democrats, Velez
himself is a Republican and an ardent Giuliani supporter. That
doesn't seem so crazy when you realize that Velez and his son have
received about $30 million in city housing, health, children's ser-
vices and substance abuse treatment contracts since 1990. Directly
across the street from a senior center he runs, his supporters have
hung a big "Democrats for Giuliani" banner.
Many of the South Bronx regulars are also Democrats for
Giuliani. The day after his loss, Perez announced his support for
the Mayor-along with his intention to oppose Espada on the
Liberal Party line.
Still, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, Velez, who was busi-
ly planning a 30th birthday party for Hunts Point Multi-Service,
was nowhere to be found on election day.
When Perez's workers ran short of campaign lit and street
money, they appealed to their second political master, Ramirez,
who was reportedly stunned by the condition of a campaign he
had largely taken for granted. He was furious at Velez for not sav-
ing Perez.
Sources say the machine's defeat can be chalked up to
Ramirez's aloofness and his full-time support of Adolfo Carrion,
who easily won the empty council seat formerly occupied by bor-
ough president candidate Israel Ruiz. The county organization pro-
vided some volunteers and a few union contacts to Perez, but that
was it. "We thought Ramon and Rosado were handling every-
thing," said a source close to Ramirez.
In tum, Perez supporters point fingers at the county. "We had
like $15 in the bank a few days ago," Rosado said on Primary Day.
"If I hadn't lined up a few quick donors, we wouldn't even have a
street operation." In all, the Perez campaign only fetched about
$13,OOO-half of that cadged from last-minute donations from the
Ferrer campaign, The Bronx County Democratic Trustees
($1,000), the sheet metal workers union ($3,550) and $300 from
Rosado's own campaign fund. Velez wrote a $1,000 check in
March, but nothing afterwards.
Rosado, like Espada himself, chalked up the loss to the county
organization's languor in the wake of Ferrer's decision not to seek
the big prize. "If Freddy had run, everything would have been
completely differen!," added Rosado, exhausting his palmcards.
''The place would have been really jumping. I'm telling you, the
dogs would have been out here barking."
A
r the moment, the only baying hounds are the Espadas. And
they've got their eyes on Rosado's senate seat and Ramirez's
reputation. Sources close to Ramirez say the leader has
pledged to devote considerable resources next year to keep Rosado
and Assemblyman Ruben Diaz in office. Rosado has already
begun mapping a counterattack.
But whatever happens, Ramirez has lost much of his kingmak-
er lustre and the party organization, bereft of Ferrer's unifying can-
didacy, is looking like a shorn Samson.
As if Ramirez needed any more proof that losing Ferrer at the
top of the ticket could be his undoing, he was given the following
instructional lesson on Primary Day:
The county organization gave the Perez troops palrncards with
second-choice Ruth Messinger's picture at the top--even though
the Manhattan borough president did not campaign in the district
and had virtually no support among club regulars. At Perez's
instruction, volunteers at the club spent hours ripping Messinger's
likeness off the top of the ticket.
Ferrer's image, on the other hand, remains a potent tool. On
Primary Day, Espada's $100 wonders passed out cards with the
borough president at the top--even though Ferrer had endorsed the
machine candidate, Perez.
A grinning Espada explained the trick: the card trumpeted his
own endorsement of the popular Ferrer, not vice-versa. By mid-
afternoon, the Ramirez-Ferrer camp realized what was going on
and fIled for an injunction on Espada's use of the palrncards. A
state judge okayed it a few hours later.
By 6 P.M., 12 hours into election day, the cops hauled away
the few remaining Freddy cards that the Espadas hadn't already
doled out..
THE INSURGENT
Dis DeJesus fiJisIJed dead last
in the race for the council seat
in the South Bronx, but he had
2,243 reasons not to feell*le
abouU.
The 27-year-old, whose insurgent
candidacy was backed by the communi-
ty organizers of ACORN and the New
Party, counted his 21 percont as a
victory. "We brought a lot of people
out who wouldn't have otherwise
yoted," said DeJesus, a City College
student lho grol up on the Grand
Concourse. "I had to talk a lot of peo-
ple into going out to yote."
DeJesus is one of the first Bronx
OCTOBER 1997
politicians to get lawlessness out of his
system before running for omce. Six
yoars ago, at age 21, ho las the look-
out man in an armed robbery, got
caught and se"ed an 18-month stretch
on likers Island and in an upstate
prison. There he discovered religion,
mended his lays and began counseling
his fellol inmates. Once on the out-
side, he hooked up lith ACORN in a
campaign against a bad landlord.
EYen 00ring the height of the cam-
paiglJ, DeJesus insisted 00 making his
schetkIIed preach-in trips to Hikers.
"Some of the in jail knew me from
the neigbborhood and wished me Iuck."
lfter confirming lith the state
elections and parole boards that he
could run, DeJesus tUrDed to
his friends at lCORN. Since the orga-
nization's Bronx omce has devoted
much of its energy in recent months
to organizing public housing tenants,
DeJesus began to knock on doors at
the litchel and lelrose projects.
He found a receptive
audience.
can relate to me," he said.
NOl he is mulling an run
against Assemblywoman Cannen Arroyo
next year.
-
CITYVIEW
Don Friedman
is a senior
policy analyst at
the Community
Food Resource
Center.
Hello, You Must Be Coing
By Don Friedman
,
'w
elcome to New York: The Cadillac
of Welfare States."
So read a campaign brochure for
an upstate legislator's successful re-
election bid a few years ago. As this
successful campaign gambit shows, the "welfare magnet"
notion-the belief that people will move from state to state to
get more generous welfare benefits-remains widespread,
enduring and politically useful.
It is also false.
Though rooted in myth and stereotype, the belief continues
to guide welfare policy. In three recent sessions, the New York
state legislature, without significant opposition from either
major party, adopted laws to restrict recent arrivals to reduced
benefits or no benefits at all for some period of time. Clearly,
lawmakers could benefit from reading some unbiased studies
on the topic.
First, it is a fact that in our highly mobile society, poor peo-
highest benefits than moved into them.
Frankly, nowhere are benefits so generous as to justify the
financial and emotional cost of relocating. The simple truth is
that poor people move for the same reasons that other folks
move: to seek better employment, to be closer to family and to
find a more hospitable climate.
The denial of aid will not deter families from moving to
New York-but it may well cause them severe and senseless
hardship.
The federal version of welfare reform adopted in August
1996 did not require that states lower benefits to new residents.
But the law explicitly invited states to do so by asking them, in
the funding requests they submit to Health and Human
Services, to indicate whether they plan to restrict benefits for
new residents.
New York accepted the invitation. Its Welfare Reform Act of
1997 stipulates that in their first year here, new residents are to
recei ve either the level of benefits they had in their prior state
or 50 percent of New York's benefits, whichever is higher. And
non-citizen legal immigrants, whether they arrive from another
country or another state, won't see any welfare benefits at all
ple tend to move less frequently than other
Americans. This is based on a 1995 study con-
ducted by the National Research Council, a non-
partisan group that also sponsors research for the
likes of the National Academy of Sciences.
The poor are also less likely to be able to
afford the expenses of moving, less likely to
have the personal and professional connections
that provide information about new locales, and
less able to afford a transition period in a new
home without income. Moreover, low-income
It is a fort that in our highly-
mobile society poor people
move less than other Americans.
Albany ignores this fort.
people's existing support network of friends and relatives are
likely to be local.
And when the poor do move, study after study-
gathered in a recently completed literature review by
the national Welfare Law Center-reveals that ben-
efit levels have had virtually no impact on their
decision to do so.
This has been the case for some time. From the
late 1960s to the mid 1980s, the poor and affluent
alike have been moving west and south, according
to research by the Russell Sage Foundation. That is
despite the fact that during this time all 17 southern
states dispensed benefits well below the national
average.
In an even more graphic illustration, a 1994
University of Wisconsin study found that between
1982 and 1988, more poor women of child-bearing
age moved from California to Texas than moved in
the opposite direction, even though Texas moms
receive one-third less than their California counterparts.
Need more proof? A 1994 University of Michigan study
reported that between 1985 and 1990, more poor people moved
into eight of the 10 states that had the lowest benefits in the
country than moved out of those states. The study also found
that more poor people moved out of six of the 10 states with the
during their first year in New York.
This discrimination against new state residents, in addi-
tion to being bad policy, also stands on shaky legal ' ground.
The legislature has adopted welfare restrictions on new resi-
dents twice before, and each time state courts have found
them unconstitutional. The critical precedent applied in both
of those cases was the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision
Shapiro v. Thompson, which nullified similar welfare resi-
dency requirements adopted in two other states and the
District of Columbia.
In Shapiro, the court ruled that the U.S. Constitution pro-
tects the right of people to travel between states and that wel-
fare restrictions against new arrivals infringed on that right.
Since both the federal and New York constitutions protect
these rights, new restrictions may be similarly stricken down.
Here in New York, such legislation may also run afoul of our
constitutional mandate to provide care for the needy.
Unfortunately, with an increasingly conservative judiciary,
we cannot be confident that the courts will adhere to earlier
decisions. But new resident restrictions are likely to face exten-
sive litigation and will hopefully be invalidated before they
inflict damage.
Yet nothing will be solved over the long term as long as law
makers use myth and stereotype as the basis for policy. They
will continue to fight welfare-not poverty .
CITY LIMITS
Bare Markets
By Chuck Collins
"Wall Street" by Doug
Henwood, Verso Books, 1997,
372 pages, $25.
profits and cash flow generated by instru-
ments such as tax breaks. The great majori-
ty of small companies are founded and
financed by individuals, their families and
local investors-and they rarely become big
enough to go public.
A
French minister attending the
recent summit of industrial
powers was asked what he
thought of America's booming
economy. He was unimpressed. 00 UGH E N WOO 0
"An economy should work for everyone in the
society," he said. "Not just the financiers."
Indeed, over the last 15 years, U.S. nonfi-
nancial corporations have retired over $700
billion more in stock than they raised, thanks
to takeovers and management buybacks.
Henwood argues that for the most part, all
Wall Street investors do is speculate on a pool
of stock that was issued long ag<r-while
adding layers of wasteful, unproductive
transaction costs as brokers skim big fees.

AIon_-'-
Henwood also examines the rising levels
of consumer debt. He argues that lower- and
Those capable of looking past the low
unemployment statistics and the excitement of
an unbridled stock market see that this economy is not working
well for most workers. Inequality of income and wealth is at its
greatest point since the 1920s. Incomes of the bottom half of
wage earners have fallen during the last 20 years while those of
the top 5 percent have doubled. Surveys show that half of U.S.
wage earners are either carrying worrisome amounts of debt,
questioning their job security, working in temporary positions
or heading toward retirement with few resources.
Yet our nation's cultural heroes are CEOs and entrepreneurs,
and the goal-oriented language of business pervades every
realm of life. Wall Street-the "capital of capital"-is celebrat-
ed as the heart of our productive economy.
In his new book, "Wall Street," Doug Henwood challenges
the hallowed assumption that this financial center generates real
productive investment. As editor of the Left Business Observer,
Henwood has been associated with socialist ideals. But actual-
ly he is a seasoned critic of all economic orthodoxy-both right
and left.
For example, he criticizes the leftist contention that globaliza-
tion lies at the root of problems such as wage stagnation. America
has spent the last century integrating into the global economy, and
yet most of our international trade continues to be with northern
industrialized nations rather than the developing south, Henwood
notes. Thus, labor and other activists should not hesitate to exert
political pressure for social change on the enormous percentage of
the U.S. economy still rooted in the domestic market.
"Wall Street" is an excellent road map through the fmancial
district. It is a guide for everyone who wants to challenge the
argument that the securities industry as we know it is central to
building and maintaining a healthy, sustainable economy.
Henwood questions the popular notion that stock markets
serve society well by efficiently steering savings toward deserv-
ing and productive investments. Rather, he argues, the system is
"stupefyingly expensive, gives terrible signals for the allocation
of capital, and has suprisingly little to do with real investment."
While most people think of the stock market as the arena
where money is raised to fuel our nation's businesses, Henwood
shows that most entrepreneurial capital is in fact found else-
where. Large firms fmance their growth internally, through
OCTOBER 1997
middle-income people are borrowing money to maintain
their standard of living even as their buying power erodes.
Consumer debt, he says, is a tool of the rich, "a way to sustain
mass consumption in the face of stagnant or falling wages." It
helps to "nourish both the appearance and reality of a middle-
class standard of living in a time of polarization."
Unfortunately, from my perspective as an activist working
on wage fairness issues, Henwood's book fails to prescribe
what could be done to reign in Wall Street and create an econ-
omy where wealth is more evenly and productively dispersed.
In a brief section entitled "What is (Not) to Be Done,"
Henwood evaluates strategies that have been tried and finds
them wanting. Efforts to reform the economy through social
investing, creating alternative local currencies or democratizing
the Federal Reserve can do little to change the allocation of
wealth and offer "no significant challenge to the social order."
He is disdainful of so-called socially responsible investing,
although he respects small programs that invest in worker own-
ership programs and the community land trust movement.
The author is most excited by efforts to "tax the fat boys,"
using European-style levies to break up the over-concentration
of wealth and generate revenue for social spending.
Sophisticated economics readers may fllld some sections of
"Wall Street" to be merely a survey of existing theory and liter-
ature, spiced with Henwood's signature irreverent comments.
And I wouldn't recommend "Wall Street" for beginners as it
requires at least a basic grasp of economics.
But this book is useful for those seeking to educate the
broader public. "Wall Street" frames important arguments that
help counter the all-pervasive "market good, government bad"
mentality.
The heart of Henwood's argument is that America's power
elite wrote the rules governing our economy, and it is now time
for workers, communities and consumers to change them. An
economy should work for everyone, Henwood believes, not just
the financiers .
Chuck Collins is co-director of United for a Fair Economy, a
nationaL organization working to address growing income and
wealth inequality, based in Boston.
REVIEW
ME
CoNSULTANT SERVICES
Proposals/Grant Writing
Real Estate Sales/Rentals
Technical Assistance
Employment Programs
Capacity Building
Community Relations
MI(UA(L 6. BU((I
CONSULTANT
HOUSING, DEVELOPMENT & FUNDRAISING
212-410-0460
212-410-3968
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204 East 93rd Street, Suite 3A
New York, New York 10128-5500
519 Sueet
'It'll 11233
(711) 455-1133
"Developing Ideas; Growing Success"
Fundraising Special Needs Housing
Strategic Planning Organizational Development
Computer Training
Kathryn Albritton Development Consultant
IRWIN NESOFF ASSOCIATES
management consulting for non-profits
Providing 0 lul/-ronge of monogement support services for
non-profit orgonizotions
o Strategic and management development plans
o Board and staff development and training
o Program design and implementation 0 Proposal and report writing
o Fund development plans 0 Program evaluation
20 51. Johns Place, Brooklyn, New York 11217 (718) 636-6087
Does your nonprofit need corporate. real estate,
tax or other business legal services?
Lawyers Alliance for New York has a staff of skilled lawyers
and a roster of 400 volunteer attorneys from leading NY firms.
We specialize in providing free or low-cost legal services to non-
profit corporations. We also offer helpful publications and work-
shops on many nonprofit legal issues.
To find out if we can help your nonprofit, call 212 219-1800
99 Hudson Street New York. NY 10013
Lawyers Alliance
for New York
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-Profit Law
Title and loan closings 0 All city housing programs
Mutual housing associations 0 Cooperative conversions
Advice to low income co-op boards of directors
100 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, (718) 624-6850
LAWRENCE H. McGAUGHEY
Attorney at Law
Meeting the challenges of affordable housing for 20 years.
Providing legal services in the areas of General Real Estate,
Business, Trust & Estates, and Elder Law.
217 Broadway, Suite 610
New York, NY 10007
(212) 513-0981
Pul.lie Rch.tiohS for NOhrrOfitS"" ',', "
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Training, Custom Software, Hand Holding
Morris Kornbluth 718-857-9157
SPECIALIZING IN REAL ESTATE
J-51 Tax Abatement/Exemption . 421A and 421B
Applications 501 (c) (3) Federal Tax Exemptions All forms
of government-assisted housing including LISC/Enterprise,
Section 202, State Turnkey, and NYC Partnership Homes
KOURAKOS & KOURAKOS
Bronx, N.Y.
(718) 585-3187
Attorneys at Law
New York, NY
(212) 551-7809
Reach 20,000 readers in the nonprofit sector,
government and property management.
ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS
OR SERVICE IN THE CITY LIMITS
PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY!
Call Faith Wiggins at
(212) 479-3344 or (917) 792-8426
CITVLlMITS
Habitat for Humanity/ NYC, a nonprofit faith based housing ministry, seeks
a PROJECT MANAGER to develop home ownership opportunities for low-
income families in various NYC neighborhoods. The Project Manager is
responsible for establishing and working with local Habitat chapters, site
acquisition, financial analysis, proposal writing, and coordination of a devel-
opment team. In addition, s/ he will work closely with other staff members
to further the work of the organization. Requirements: BA; 2 years of expe-
rience in real estate management/development, urban planning, communi-
ty organizing or a related field. Strong computer skills (Microsoft Office);
excellent written and oral communication abilities. Applicant should be self-
motivated, able to work independently and handle multiple tasks. Salary:
low $30K. Send resume and cover letter to: Richard Wong, Deputy Director,
Habitat for HumanitY-NYC, 115 East 23 St., 10th Floor, NYC 10010.
EXECUT1VE DIRECTOR. Met Council Research and Educational Fund (MCREF) , a
not-for-profit housing advocacy and tenants' organizing group, is seeking a new
Executive Director. Responsibilities: Overall responsibility for organizing tenants
associations; developing tenant leadership; coordinating workshops, fundrais-
ing and publishing newsletter. Director works closely with board and staff of vol-
unteers. Requirements: 3 years or more experience in tenant organizing or com-
munity organizing. Excellent writing and oral communication skills; bilingual
Spanish-English. Salary: $30,000. To apply, send resume to MCREF, 102
Fulton St., Rm. 302, NYC 10038, or fax it to (212) 693-0555, Att. Wilson
Spencer. For information call (212) 693-0553.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. Largest non-profit housing corporation in East St. Louis
seeks person with homeownership counseling, property management, loan ser-
vicing, and grantsmanship skills. Minimum of two years of experience.
$30,000-$35,000 plus benefits. Send resume, cover letter, and three work ref-
erences ASAP: Citizens for The Future, P.O. Box 2678, East St. Louis, IL 62202.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZER. Not-for-profit corporation located in major waterfront
industrial zone seeks two new team members. Positions entail working on a
broad variety of problems and issues; developing new programs and services;
promoting state-sponsored investment and wage tax credits to local manu-
facturers; developing and managing special projects; participating on vital
community task forces encompassing urban planning, transportation, and
port and rail freight issues; and participating in organization's effort to devel-
op a three-year strategic plan. Strong computer skills essential. Competitive
salary and benefits. Send resume and cover letter to Daniel Dray, Director,
Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corp., 269 37th St., Brooklyn, NY
11232. Fax: (718) 965-4906.
IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY. Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A seeks a Staff
Attorney specializing in Immigration Law for its Williamsburg office. Position
entails running community based programs focusing on naturalization issues
and representing clients, particularly those with difficult cases. Looking for an
attorney with significant experience in immigration law. Recent grads with expe-
rience will be considered. Bilingual skills (Spanish, Yiddish and Polish) are an
asset. The position is available as of October 15th. Send resume and cover
letter to Martin S. Needleman, Project Director, Brooklyn Legal Services
Corporation A, 256-260 Broadway, Brooklyn, New York, 11211.
STAfF ATTORNEY. Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A seeks experienced
attorney to work in its East Brooklyn Office's Community and Economic
Development Unit. Diverse legal work representing community-based organiza-
tions involved in activities such as creation of new and rehabilitated housing,
empowerment of tenants, expansion of health care and childcare and the cre-
ation of business and job opportunities. Applicants must be admitted to NY bar
and have significant experience in relevant areas of law. Salary is governed by
citywide legal services collective bargaining agreement and includes excellent
benefits. Send resume to: Paul Acinapura, Deputy Project Director, BLSA, 80
Jamaica Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11207.
CONSTITUENT SEJMCEStCOMMUNITY BOARD LIAISON. Council member Eldridge
seeks college grad to work with constituents, community boards, and city agen-
cies on housing, traffic, transportation, and sanitation. Successful candidate
should be a sharp, flexible, hardworking self-starter who works well with others.
Fax cover letter and resume to (212) 765-4805.
ADMINIS1RATlVE ASSISTANT/ BOOKKEEPER. Responsibilities: provide support ser-
vices to staff, handle all daily office functions including telephones, generating
business correspondence, prepare financial reports, government and private
contract obligations, maintain financial files and internal monthly statements.
Requirements: excellent reading and writing skills, knowledge of MS Word, and
Excel Programs, good communication and inter-personal skills. Not-for-profit
experience a must. Must be self-motivated and have the ability to identify and
resolve problems. Must posses High School Diploma. Salary negotiable. Send
resume and cover letter to Brooklyn Neighborhood Improvement Association,
1482 St. Johns PI., Suite lF, Brooklyn, NY 11213. Attn. Andrea Britton.
COMMUNITY LIAISON. Responsibilities: counsel tenants and owners regarding
housing rights and responsibilities, and housing stabilization resources; advo-
OCTOBER 1997
cate for code compliance. Provide technical assistance to tenant and block
associations in order to increase organizational development and effectiveness.
Plan, publicize and conduct housing workshops as needed. Requirements: the
candidate must have demonstrated a commitment to empowerment and self
help and be available to work some evenings. A bachelors degree/ or 3 years
of housing experience, community organizing, social services and urban plan-
ning. Salary negotiable. Send resume and cover letter to Brooklyn
Neighborhood Improvement Association, 1482 St. Johns PI., Suite lF, Brooklyn
NY 11213. Attn. Andrea Britton.
PROJECT MANAGER. Church affiliated community development corporation, serv-
ing Bedford-Stuyvesant, seeks individual to direct housing initiatives, and assist
with economic development activities. Minimum 3 years experience in NYC
housing rehabilitation; excellent writing and computer skills; college degree.
Competitive salary and benefits. Contact Colvin W. Grannum, Esq., Bridge
Street Development Corporation, 277 Stuyvesant Ave., Brooklyn, New York
11221; (718) 452-3936; Fax (718) 4534134.
ATTORNEY. MFY Legal Services seeks an attorney with at least a one to two
years' family law and/ or trial experience to represent parents primarily in fos-
ter care matters, abuse/neglect proceedings, termination of parental rights
cases. Good writing and trial skills required. Spanish language skills preferred.
Salary pursuant to collective bargaining agreement. Send resume and writing
sample ASAP to Jeanette Zelhof, Managing Attorney, 299 Broadway, 4t h Roor,
NY, NY 10007.
NMIC, a housing and social service organization seeks applications for two p o s ~
tions: INTAKE SPECW.JST: Part of a legal services team. Conducts initial cl ient
screening and assessment regarding housing need and level of assistance-
legal , paralegal, benefits, social services, informational. PARALEGAL: handles
case load for individual clients seeking assistance with housing problems.
Advocates for clients in landlord-tenant actions and disputes; seeks Jiggetts
relief and proper client benefits. Salary and benefits competitive depending on
experience. Requirements: BA, bilingual , two years housing and social services
advocacy experience. Send resume to: NMIC, 76 Wadsworth Ave. , NYC 10033.
Fax: (212) 928-4180.
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT OPERATIONS, New York ACORN Housing Co. seeks
highly motivated individuals with hands-on management experience for commLl-
nity based housing projects; strong desire to work for economic justice, self
starter with the ability to carry housing development projects through to com-
pletion. Previous administrative responsibility. Fax resume to Ismene: (718)
693-3367.
RESIDENT ORGANIZER. New York ACORN Housing Co. seeks individuals commit-
ted to working with residents in NYCHA' s housing developments to build com-
munity, fight crime and drugs, improve neighborhood services and get people
involved in other economic and social justice issues. Bilingual required. Fax
resume to Ismene: (718) 693-3367.
TECHNICAl. ASSISTANCE PROVIDER for national community development organi-
zation. Assist community land trusts with all phases of community based hous-
ing development, including organizational and project development. Requires
three years housing development, organizing and teaching/training experience;
excellent communication and analytical skills; significant travel. Cover letter and
resume to: Carol Lewis, Institute for Community EconomiCS, 57 School St. ,
Springfield, MA 01105. EOE.
PROGRAM ASSOCIA1L The North Star Fund, a progressive organization which sup-
ports community organizations and social change in NYC, seeks a full-time pro-
gram associate to coordinate our Community Funding Board and grantrnaking
programs. Experience with community organizations, writing and computer skills
are necessary. Experience in grant proposal evaluations and fundraising a plus.
Should have political perspective compatible with our progressive mission. $30-
35K and generous benefits. Resumes to North Star Fund, 305 Seventh Ave. ,
NYC 10001. People of color, lesbians and gay men encouraged to apply.
ASSOCIATE PROGRAM DIRECTOR, The Bridge Fund of New York City is seeking
an associate program director for its eviction prevention program in
Manhattan. Our organization is a privately funded program that provides a
combination of financial assistance and intensive counseling to many work-
ing poor families. The individual we seek will have overall responsibility for
the management of this program, a loan budget of $100,000, plus FEMA
funds. The successful candidate will have 3-5 years of direct service experi-
ence and good administrative skills, excellent verbal and writing skill s. BA
required. Responsibil ities include evaluating loan requests, accessing both
public and private eviction prevention funds, community outreach, coordinat-
ing with outside services, writing monthly reports and aSSisting in fund rais-
ing activities. This position is a great opportunity for someone who is seek-
ing to build a program and be an active participant in t he growth of a small ,
expanding organization. Salary is commensurate with experience. The
Bridge Fund of New York City is an equal opportunity employer. Fax or send
resume: Barbara Johnson, Executive Director, The Bridge Fund of New York
City, 105 East 22nd St., Suite 621, NYC 10010; Fax: (212) 674-0542.
ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR OF PUBlIC POLICY. Experienced advocate, prefer-
ably in aging. Act as spokesperson on behalf of senior services at coalition
meetings with government officials; excellent writing skills; computer literate;
self-starter in following through on issues; staff committees. Salary: low
30' s w/ fringes . Send resume: Bobbie Sackman, Director of Public Policy,
Council of Senior Centers and Services, 49 W. 45th St., 7th Flo , NYC 10036.
Fax (212) 398-8398.
ASSISTANT TO EXECU11VE DIRECTOR. National Jewish membership organization for
philanthropists and foundation trustees and staff, to advance the growth and
quaiity of Jewish philosophy, through more effective grantmaking to Jewish and
secular causes. Database management, bookkeeping, word processing, and
Website maintenance, conference logistics and coordination, taking meeting
minutes, answering phones, Office 97 (Word, Excel , Access) Quickbooks.
Strong organizational skills, ability to self-prioritize, attention to detail. Website
experience a plus. Salary mid-20K. Call Evan Mendelson, Executive Director,
Jewish Funders Network, (212) 726-0177.
CONTROlLER. Property Management Company seeks hands on Controller to
supervise small accounting dept.; prepare reports to HUD, DHCR & HPD; main-
tain system of internal control ; prepare reports for board meetings. Knowledge
of spreadsheet, property management, accounting software required. 5+ years
of accounting experience preferred. Send resume with salary history to: Mr.
Webb, P.O. Box 4073, Garden City, NY 11531.
JOB DEVELOPER to work with homeless and formerly homeless women in job
placement, develop corporate contacts/ long term relationships. BA degree and
experience working with population. Send or fax cover letter, resume and salary
requirements to Coalition for the Homeless, 89 Chambers St. , NYC 10007,
Attention: PDFSJ (212) 964-1303
The Community Builders, a non-profit community development organization,
seeks to hire three highly motivated, experienced housing professionals to
implement the residential component of a comprehensive neighborhood devel-
opment strategy in Philadelphia. Candidates are invited to apply for the newly
created pOSitions of PROGRAM MANAGER, PROGRAM COUNSELOR AND REHAB SPE
CIALIST to implement a new program of homebuyer assistance, homeowner
rehabilitation, and targeted acquisition and rehabilitation of 1-4 family proper-
ties in an architecturally significant community. This unique opportunity offers
competitive salary and benefits. Forward resume and cover letter with salary
requirements to: The Community Builders, 100 N. 17th St. , Philadelphia, PA
19103, attention: Search Committee, fax (215) 246-0540, or e-mail Leo Quigley
at leoq@tcbinc.org. No phone calls please.
PROJECT MANAGER for Volunteers of America. Job involves the development and
oversight of real estate projects in New York and Northern New Jersey.
Requirements include financial evaluation and spreadsheet skills, housing expe-
rience, and a Masters degree in business, planning. Salary high 30s+ (depend-
ing on exp.) plus benefits. Send resumes to Robert Sanborn, Director, Capital
Projects, VOA-GNY, 340 West 85th St., NYC 10024.
ADMINISTRA11VE ASSISTANT. Mature and experienced administrative assistant for
small non-profit organization on Manhattan' s Upper West Side. Excellent writing
and word processing skills. Organized and able to handle multiple tasks at the
same time. Self-starter with high energy, positive attitude. Salary: $25,000
plus. Excellent benefits. Equal opportunity employer. Please fax resume to: Ms.
L.O.C. (212) 870-2464.
Neighborhood Reinvestment, a national nonprofit, is seeking a RELD SERVICE
OFRCER. FSOs provide management consultation, technical assistance and
coordination of resources to nonprofit organizations in affordable housing and
neighborhood revitalization. Qualifications: experience in nonprofit community
development work; skilled in providing technical assistance and training in
resource development/marketing. Must be bi-lingual (English/ Spanish), able to
resolve conflict, build consensus, solution-oriented and work within a diverse
team. Frequent travel. Position located in NYC or Ithaca. $35 to $50K DOE;
excellent benefits; AA/ EOE. Resume and cover letter to: Neighborhood
Reinvestment Corporation, 108 North Cayuga St., Ithaca, NY 14850.
PARTTlME FUNDRAISING ASSOCIATE. ANHD, a citywide, nonprofit low-income hous-
ing advocacy organization seeks an experienced individual to assist in tundrais-
ing, proposal writing, grants administration and membership services.
Requirements: Good writing skills, familiarity with NYC housing programs, knowl-
edge of the funding community. BA or equivalent experience. Hours: flexible, 15
to 20 hours a week. Salary: commensurate with experience. Mail or fax resume
to: Executive Director, ANHD, 305 7th Ave., Suite 2001, NYC 10001. Fax: (212)
463-9606.
PROGRAM ADMINISTRA11VE ASSISTANT. Reports to Director of Youth Unlimited.
Assists Director with program administration, including assuring timely report
preparation, . filing scheduling, documentation, database management,
research, logistics, maintenance of program activities, agendas and memo
preparation, seed program planning. BA and two years experience in nonprofit
administration. Excellent communication skills required. Knowledge of MS
Access or other database program required. Experience with youth organizing a
plus. Salary mid-20K. Resume to: YTH, CCNYC, 305 7th Ave. , NYC 10001.
COMMUNITY COORDINIO'OR, antk:rime organizing project in northern Brooklyn. Build
problem-solving community/ police partnerships. Project coordination, training, out-
reach, database maintenance. BA plus three years experience in community polic-
ing or antk:rime and/ or antKjrug organizing. Night meetings and irregular hours.
Excellent writing/public speaking skills. Familiarity with northern Brooklyn neighbor-
hoods, computer mapping and databases, grassroots volunteer groups, bilingual ,
all a plus. $35,000. Excellent benefits. Resume, three references, writing sample
to: NACC, CCNYC, 305 7th Ave., 15th R., NYC 10001. Fax: (212) 989-0983.
Growing Brooklyn nonprofit housing, community and youth development agency
seeks the following staff: COMPUTER LEARNING CENTER DlRECTORITEACHER.
Seeking energetic self-starter to direct new computer learning center.
Responsible for teaching classes and developing lesson plans, training and
supervising assistants, researching and selecting software and coordinating
system maintenance. BA/BS and two years' teaching experience utilizing corn-
puter technology required. Strong interpersonal skills, program management
experience, and ability to work flexible hours also required. System maintenance
experience and bilingual English/ Spanish preferred. Low to upper $30s, DOE.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, Department of Resident Advocacy. Seeking a professional
with social service/ community organizing/development experience to assist
director in program planning and management, social service provision and ten-
ant and community organizing. Candidates should have strong administrative,
social service and community organizing skills, BA and excellent verbal/written
skills. Ruent Spanish and flexible hours a plus. Salary low to mid $30s, DOE.
DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR. Seeking energetic self-starter to join management
team. Responsible for conducting private foundation/ corporate fundraising,
preparing government funding applications and assisting in program develop-
ment. BA plus 3-5 years relevant experience, strong writing, interpersonal, and
organizational skills and proven track record in raising foundation and corporate
funding required. Low to upper $30s depending on experience. FOR ALL THREE
POSIT1ONS fax or mail resume with cover letter and salary history to: Executive
Director, ENY Urban Youth Corps., 539 Alabama Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11207. Fax:
(718) 922-1171. No phone calls.
POLICY ASSOCIATE. Child Care, Inc., a leading child care policy and advocacy
organization, seeks motivated individual with excellent communication skills to
work with the executive director on child care policy issues including welfare-to-
work and school-age child care. Draft policy alerts, edit and coordinate the dis-
tribution of our fax newsletter and work with multiple coalitions. Should be corn-
fortable with data collection and reporting, designing simple questionnaires and
other data gatheri ng tools. Part-time employment is an option. Excellent oppor-
t unity to be in the center of emerging child care policy discussions. Fax or mail
resume to Nancy Kolben, Executive Director, Child Care, Inc. , 275 Seventh Ave.,
NYC 10001. Fax: (212) 929-5785.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS. The Training Institute for Careers in Organizing seeks
people eager to fight for social justice as community organizers. TICO is a 12-
week, full -time apprenticeship providing field and classroom expo Stipend
$920/ month. Runs Jan. through March. Permanent positions avail. at end of
program. Call TICO at (718) 584-0515.
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT for Chinese-American Planning Council. Help coordi-
nate agency projects. Maintain fundraising databases, public relations files.
Respond to RFPs. Provide administrative support to board of directors.
Qualifications: BA, 2 years' experience in non-profit administration; excellent
writing, communication skills; computer literacy. Bilingual Chinese/ English
preferred. Mid $20s, plus benefits. Fax resume to Allen Cohen (212) 966-
8581.
OFRCE MANAGER! FUNDRAISING ASSISTANT. Organization of low-income people,
mostly on welfare, seeks individual responsible for managing finances, files,
data base and grants. Will assist in financial and grant reports. Ideally, candi-
date will have administrative and mgt. experience (bookkeeping, accounting and
volunteer coordination). EOE. Salary $25-30K. Minorities strongly urged to apply.
Contact: Community VOices Heard. 212-533-6667 or fax resume: (212) 674-
1946.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR. Neighborhood Anti-Crime Center seeks take-charge person
to manage citywide program. mobilizing neighborhood residents for safety (anti-
crime and anti-drug). Non-profit mgt. and fundraising experience and strong writ-
ing skills a plus. Minimum 5 years community organizing experience required.
MA preferred. Knowledge of NYC neighborhoods and drug abuse or crime pre-
vention. Salary negotiable. Resume, writing sample and salary. req. to: MC,
CCNYC, 305 7th Ave., NYC 10001.
EMPLOYMENT DEVELOPMENT AND PLACEMENT COORDINImlR. The Rfth Avenue
Committee, a housing and community development organization in South
Brooklyn, seeks to fill a training/human services position related to the organiza-
tion's local business ventures. Responsibilities: design of recruitment and pre-
CITY LIMITS
employment training; provision of tailored individual counseling, support and
career planning to employees; development of innovative training and employment
opportunities. Requirements: BA or equivalent. exp.; successful job placement
and individual/group counseling exp.; experience working with low income popula-
tion; motivated, creative, welk>rganized. Bilingual a plus. Resume/letter to Aaron
Shiffman, FAC, 141 Rfth Ave. , Brooklyn, NY 11217. Fax (718) 857-4322. EOE
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER. The Rfth Avenue Committee, a housing and
community development organization in South Brooklyn, seeks a social entre-
preneur to manage the development and marketing of an innovative temporary
staffing services enterprise designed to offer labor market access to low-income
individuals. Responsibilities: coordination of all business pre-startup work;
development of relationships with potential clients; assistance with business
plan. Development manager may become mgr. of business. Creativity and peo-
ple skills essential. Salary and benefits competitive depending on experience.
Resume and letter to Aaron Shiffman, FAC, 141 Rfth Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11217.
Fax (718) 857-4322. EOE
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SENIOR PlANNER. Pratt Institute Center for Community
and Environmental Development (PICCED) seeks an experienced planner to pro-
vide neighborhood planning assistance, project-speCific technical assistance
and training in planning, development finance and project management to non-
profit community-based development organizations in NYC and Vicinity. Direct
HUD-funded technical assistance contract. Conduct occasional research on
urban policy issues affecting low-income neighborhoods, both locally and nation-
ally. M.S. in planning, plus five years experience in hands-on low-income corn-
munity development and related policy issues (or equivalent combination of edu-
cation and experience) and facility with planning and development computer
applications (e.g. Lotus/ Excel , Dbase, word processing, Mapinfo, etc.) required.
Spanish speaking a plus. Salary to $40,000 plus benefits for this grant-funded
position. Review of resumes begins immediately and continues until position
filled. Send to: PICCED (Dept. UP), 379 DeKalb Ave. , 2nd FI. , Brooklyn, NY
11205. An M / EOE. Women and minorities strongly encouraged to apply.
DIRECTOR OF PROPERTY MANAGEMENT. An established Bronx CDC seeks a
Director of Property Management to oversee 30 buildings with 1,000 housing
units for low- and moderate-income families, supervise a staff of five, including
three property managers, and 28 building personnel. These buildings were
acquired through POMP, SIP, PLP, VCP and LlHTC programs. Responsibilities:
develop building budgets and variance reports, collect rents, negotiate vendor
contracts, solicit/review bids and monitor repairs, approve leases, supervise
income verification and reporting, make court appearances and ensure adher-
ence to DHCR regulations. Requirements: a minimum of 3 years experience in
property management with supervisory experience strongly preferred. Excellent
verbal and written communication skills as well as computer proficiency.
Salary: to low $40s plus full benefits. Please send resume and cover letter with
salary history to: Executive Director, Mount Hope Housing Company, 2003-05
Walton Avenue, Bronx, NY 10453. Or fax: (718) 583-6557.
YOUTH ORGANIZER. Kingsbridge Heights Neighborhood Improvement Association
seeks a full-time Youth/Community Organizer to staff our Youth Leadership
Project. Program centered around group organizing and multicultural aware-
ness. $19.5K plus benefits. Previous experience with teenagers helpful.
Contact Mark or Brian at (718) 796-7950 for information.
CAREER-IN-BUSINESS DEVELOPER. A small nonprofit Women's Education Center
in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn is seeking an energetic person for an excit-
ing full time position. We need a bi-lingual (Spanish-English) person who can
work with small groups of women on career development as well as help begin
a business with some of the participants. If interested, fax resumes to (718)
452-5173. Salary negotiable.
FIT YOUTH WORKER. The Andrew Glover Youth Program has provided innovative,
effective court advocacy and crime prevention programs for youthful offenders
and at-risk youth for nearly 20 years. The program seeks a committed and qual-
ified individual to provide direct service to at-risk youth from East Harlem. Must
be biligual Spanish/English. Minimum high school diploma. Prior experience with
youth and knowledge of East Harlem community. Must be East Harlem reSident
or willing to relocate. Also willing to work within the legal system. Most of all, be
energetic and committed to the program's mission and youth. Fax or send
resume and cover letter by October 31 to Vera Miao, Community Resource
Exchange at (212) 344-1230, 90 Washington St. , 27th floor, NYC 10006
JusticeWorks Community, an organization with services and advocacy focused on
women prisoners, ex-prisoners and their children seeks an EXECU11VE DIRECTOR.
Responsible for fundraising, media and public relations, oversight of program and
strategiC management. Manages a $350,000 budget and a staff of 5 full-time
and 4-6 part-time persons. Ideal candidate will have a minimum of 5 years non-
profit management experience, BA degree, insight into criminal justice issues,
program experience with marginalized populations and familiarity with communi-
ty organizing techniques. Salary is $50-60,000 plus benefits. Letter of interest
with reume, writing sample and 3 professional references to: Ellen S. Hirsch,
JusticeWorks Community, 1012 Eighth Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11215.
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1997 ANNUAL
HOUSING CONFERENCE
&
MEMBERSHIP MEETING OF
THE NEIGHBORHOOD
PRESERVATION COALITION
OF NEW YORK STATE, INC.
October 19--20--21, 1997
Omni Albany Hotel
Albany, New York
___________ Topics Include: -----------
Shaping a State Housing Policy; New York State's Economic Development Zones
Program; AIDS Housing Advocacy and Activism; Building Homeless and Special
Needs Housing; Neighbors Building Neighborhoods; Fair Housing Laws and
Resources; The Changing World of SRO Housing; Using CRA to Spur Economic
Development and Create Jobs; Combating Environmental Racism; Welfare Reform,
Immigration and Housing; Implementing the New Rent Laws; and much more!
___________ Guest Speakers __________ _
Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics
NYS Comptroller H. Carl McCall
Social Activist Judith A. Faulkner
DHCR's Acting Commissioner Joseph B. Lynch
The Affordable Housing Conference brings together
community-based groups from urban areas throughout the state.
Join us as we network, attend up-to-date workshops on critical issues
and new programs, and strategize on state legislative priorities.
FQ.r information call:
C 5 ~ 1 8 ) 432;6757