Contents

Editorial. ......................................... 3
Community Prorlles
Building Pueblo Nuevo .................. 19
Opinion
Organize!
The Unenforced Lead Paint Law ................ 4
Seward Park's Discrimination ................... 22
Short Term Notes
Legal Briefs
The Rent Goes Up in Public Housing .. .. ........... 6
Lovers, Roommates ... and the Landlord ........ 24
Tenants Tactics
What Security Deposits Could Do .................. 7
Piercing the Corporate Shield .................. 26
Rent Curbs for Church and College ... , ............ 8
Resources/Events ................................. 27
State Bonds for Participation Loans ............. 10
Peoples Art
Not Banking in Brooklyn ........... ............ 12
Harlem's Studio Museum ..................... 28
THE TALK OF THE TOWN ....................... 14
Review
Apartments built for southern blacks come to New York, where plans for
the NAACP were hatched and jazz musicians thrived. are fast being emptied
of their tenants.
'The Long Default' ......................... 29
Follow-Up .................. . ..................... 30
The Photocopy Question
One dilemma in being a small
publication aimed at getting needed in-
formation to as many people as possible
is the Photocopy Question. The
Photocopy Question has tied up some
of the best thinkers for years. There is
a whole body of literature that has
grown up around the issue, and some
have even gone to court to ask judges
what they think of the Photocopy Ques-
tion. We don't pretend to have figured
out what has stumped everyone else
since the first copyrighted article was
singed by the bulb in the first Xerox
machine. But we do have our own com-
plaints. We'll make them brief.
Not an issue goes by that we don't
get a request from one or more groups
to copy and distribute an article. We
never - never - say no. We do,
however, ask that the copiers make sure
our name is still on the paper, and, if
possible, our address, and, best of all,
our subscription rates. Then we wait for
the subscriptions to roll in. (Readers
should know that we are not over-
CITY lIMITS/June-July 1983
worked in the subscription department.
Occasionally confused - but never
overworked.)
Those who call, or write, who stick
our banner and address and subscrip-
tion prices on an article are the good
guys. Not everyone is in that category.
Somewhere out there in one of those
municipal superagencies, people every
month try to solve the city's fiscal
crunch by photocopying whole issues of
City Limits and then passing them out
to those they think should read it. This
is definitely a mixed blessing for those
. who get these pirated, photocopied edi-
tions because our graphics don't
reproduce well that way. It is a similar
2
mixed blessing for us, since we get
passed further along, but we don't get
much in the way of return payment
because the recipients know their
source is always good for more. These
are the photocopy felons.
Some zealots urge us to name names
and engage a suitable pro bono attorney
from a four star Park Avenue law firm.
Fortunately, calmer heads prevail here.
We acknowledge that, inasmuch as we
seek to encourage the widest possible
use of City Limits for information and
organizing, we can't solve the
Photocopy Question. Instead, we'll do
what we are best at: pleading. Finding
occasional articles so useful you can't
resist running to the nearest Savin is
grand. But please be sure credit is
given where credit is due. And for
those whose habit is so bad it is a
monthly occurrence, we have some
solutions: good group subscription rates
- prices you never believed possible .
Call our subscription counselor at
239-8440, and we'll keep the zealots at
bay another year.
(OTYUMI1S),
I
Volume VIII Number 6
City Limits is published ten times per year, monthly
except double issues in June/July and
August/September. by the City Limits Community
Information Service. Inc .. a nonprofit olpllization
devoted to disseminating information concerning
neighborOOod revitalization. The publication is spon- .
sored by three organizations. The sponsor.; are:
Association of Neighborhood Housing Dt'Velopers,
Inc., an association of over two dozen community-
based. nonprofit housing development groups,
developing and advocating programs for low and
moderate income housing and neighborhood
stabilization.
Pran Institu!e ~ n t e r for Community and Environ-
mental Dt'Velopment. a technical assistance and ad-
vocaq office offering professional planning and ar-
chitectural services to low and moderate income
community groups. The Center also analyzes and
. monitor.; government policy and performance.
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, a technical
assistance organization providing assistance to low
income tenant cooperatives in management and sweat
equity rehabilitation.
City Limits ~ comments and article contribu-
tions. Please include a stamped, self-addressed
envelope for return of manuscripts. Material in City
Limits does no! oecessariIy reflect the opinion of the
sponsoring organizations. Send correspondence to:
CITY UMITS, 424 West 33rd Street, New York,
N.Y. 10001. Postmaster send change of address to:
City Limits, 424 W. 33rd SI., New York, N.Y. 10001.
Second-class postage paid
New York. N.Y. 10001
City Limits (ISSN 0199-'>330)
(212) 239-8440
Editor ..... . .. . ................ Tom Robbins
Assistant Editor ......... .. ... Susan Baldwin
Marketing Director. ............ Jim Mendell
Design and Layout. .... .. ....... Louis Fulgorti
Copyright 1983. All Rights Reserved.
No portion or pottions of this journal may be
reprinted without the express perrrtission of the
publisher.;.
Cover photo by Nestor Cortijo
Shaping the Budgets
New York City will adopt its budget this month, and the services, pro-
jects and programs that are both funded and underfunded will shape the
health of our neighborhoods in the year to come. The $317 million New
York City will spend in federal Community Development Block Grants is a
crucial piece of that fiscal decision making. The only funds earmarked
specifically for low and moderate income neighborhood preservation can,
if correctly spent, enhance those neighborhoods; misspent, they can
displace people and disrupt their communities.
The city administration is preparing to make some misguided deci-
sions on how those dollars will be used. We would commend to it the
"counter budget" prepared by the New York City Housing and Community
Development Coalition, which points out a number of ways to substantially
improve that budget and maximize the potential of local efforts to create
decent affordable housing.
Here are just three major points from that budget the City would do .
well to adopt:
1. Don't spend another $24 million of CD funds on Participation Loans that
won't produce affordable housing. There's an alternative: use tax exempt
bond finanCing to both bring projected rents closer to what housing-poor
New Yorkers can afford, and free up CD funds for low income projects.
It can be done-the state Housing Finance Agency proposes to do so
this summer.
2. Take those freed up dollars and put them where the city's most distressed
housing is: the tax-foreclosed properties which represent the city's
greatest potential for a permanent low income housing stocK and which
are in danger of being "consolidated" and demolished through
underfunding.
3. Stop paying for HPD's central administration with funds that are sup-
posed to go to projects that serve the poor. Each year, HPD plucks tens
of millions from the Community Development budget to pay for opera-
tions that have nothing to do with low and moderate income housing
and which the city is obligated to pay for from its own tax levies. The
same goes for work such as complaint intake, inspections and fire
salvage: these programs are part of the effort the city is required to main-
tain. It is an illegal use under the CD regulations.
There's a surplus at this point in the city's own budget. Continuing to
divert funds from the CD budget can only constitute theft of funds from
those who need them the most. 0
On the Cover: Staff and board members of Pueblo Nuevo:
Front Row: Dennis Boody, Richard Carrasco, Nestor Cortijo.
Standing: Gloria Socorro, Leonor Calderon, Luis Soler, Diana Adorno,
Margarita Fournier, Jose Vasquez.
3
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
The Lead Paint Law: Unpuhlicized and Unenforced
By Maxine Golub
L
AST MONTH, A TWO-'EAR-OLD
child was admitted to Montefiore
Medical Center for emergency treatment
for lead poisoning. Carmine was not a new
patient. She had been monitored closely for
the last six weeks in the out-patient clinic, .
because her blood lead levels were slight-
ly above normal. As required by the NYC
Health Code, the staff had reported her
case to the Bureau of Lead Poisoning and
requested that her home be inspected and
repaired. Despite these efforts, Carmine's
blood lead level had jumped from
"borderline" to "emergency" since her last
visit.
The reason is simple. In spite of the fact
that Carmine was known to the Bureau of
Lead Poisoning, and the fact that her home
had been inspected and a work order cer-
tified to the City'S Emergency Repair Pro-
gram, no repairs had yet been made in her
family's Bronx apartment. There is no one
to blame, no finger to point . Six weeks isn't
long, these things take time, I'm told. A
week for the initial inspection, two weeks
for the landlord to make repairs, a fourth
week for the second inspection which con-
firms that no repairs have been made.
Another week to send a work order to the
ERP, and then a contractor must be found
to do the job .. .
A a result of this systemic ineptitude,
Carmine suffered five days of painful in-
jections in the hospital. Far worse is the
permanent intellectual impairment she may
yet suffer. Only one bout of serious lead
toxicity may result in delayed speech
development , poor verbal processing,
decreased attention span and lowered IQ
points - all critical for effective classroom
performance. The real crime here is that,
until Carmine became lead poisoned, no
one cared that her home was full of peel-
ing lead paint, the cause of our nation's
most prevalent preventable childhood
disease.
Lead poisoning is not a new disease.
Historians indicate that lead was a known
source of malaise as far back as ancient
Rome, when the ruling class fell ill from
wine stored in leaden vessels. Modern
CITY LIMITS/June-July 1983
education they will require, will be incur-
red by the taxpayer. Despite its long history,
large medical costs, and the suffering of
countless children, lead poisoning continues
to be allowed to exist.
In January, 1982, the City Council pass-
ed Local Law #1; it is now a "c" violation
of the Housing Code for any type of peel-
ing paint to be present in an apartment built
before 1960, where there are children six
years or younger. This is the very first piece
of city legislation aimed at protecting
children from lead poisoning before it oc-
curs. In contrast,the current NYC Health
Code does not mandate housing repairs until
a child is already known to be lead poison-
ed, thus using children as a barometer to
measure lead in poorly maintained housing.
Un publicized and Unenforced
\;; That this law was passed is due largely to
~ the efforts of community organizers and
health workers in the Washington Heights
area, and the pressure they apply on their
local politicians. Unfortunately, the law is
not being pubHcized or enforced. At a re-
cent meeting, an HPD staff person admit-
ted that she was unaware of the law. Further-
more, the Department acknowledges that
only one percent of all housing violations
recorded actually are brought to litigation.
medical journals are filled with informa-
tion about the disease. In the late 1960s and
early 70s, the Citizens to End Lead Poison-
ing formed an active lobby in New York
City. Their actions resulted in the develop-
ment of the Lead Poisoning Control Pro-
gram of the NYC Department of Health,
and a proliferation of screening programs
throughout the city.
Recent studies by Dr. Herbert L.
Needleman show that lead is dangerous at
levels far lower than previously thought ;
children exhibiting lead levels in the so-caIl-
ed "normal" range suffer developmental
delays and learning disorders which affect
both classroom performance and the
development of necessary life skills.
Current national statistics indicate that
11.6 percent of inner city children between
the ages of one and six suffer from lead
poisoning. Statistics for black children are
estimated at 18.6 percent, or almost one out
of five. Many ofthese children will require
diagnostic testing and treatment in the
hospital as well as ongoing out-patient
follow up. Most of their medical costs, as
well as the costs of the special or remedial
4
Recently, I brought this law to the atten-
tion of an HPD lawyer at a 7-A Proceeding
in the Bronx Housing Court. He was
unaware that three children in the building
were already lead poisoned, and that many
others were at risk. due to quantities of peel-
ing paint in their apartments. The judge
issued a court order, identifying the scrap-
ing, plastering and painting of all apartments
with children as the highest priority.
The prevention of lead poisoning offers
an exciting opportunity for health and hous-
ing activists to work together to put this issue
back on the public agenda. Parents, tenants,
and community groups must be informed
and encouraged to insist on safe housing for
children. Peeling paint must be treated as
the life threatening danger that it is, and be
made a priority issue by HPD. It would seem
appropriate for one of the City Council's
committees to take responsibilty for
monitoring the enforcement of this law.
In addition, the Department of Health
must be encouraged to adopt a more ag-
gressive stance on screening for lead poison-
ing. This simple finger-prick blood test is
an easy, inexpensive way to be sure a child
is not lead toxic. Legislation to make screen-
ing mandatory should be supported
throughout the state, and monies restored to
support educational and screening efforts in
the city.
While screening programs are necessary
to detect existing cases of lead toxicity in
children, this will not prevent lead poison-
ing. Unless homes are repaired, children
will continue to.contract lead poisoning at
an alarming rate. Clearly, in the case of a
disease which threatens to cause irreversi-
ble brain damage in one out of nine inner
city children, these preventive and protec-
PAYING
TOO
MUCH
tive efforts can provide immeasurable
benefit. 0
Maxine Golub is coordinator of the Lead
Poisoning Prevention Project of Montefiore
Medical Center in the Bronx.
ANHD Has 33
The Association of Neighborhood Hous-
ing Developers, an association of nonprofit
housing development groups in New York
City, admitted three new members in May.
They are: Better Community Civic Associa-
tion, serving Jamaica, Queens; Brooklyn
Neighborhood Improvement Association,
in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; and,
Longwood Historic District Community
Association, serving the Longwood com-
munity in the South Bronx.
ANHD now has 33 member
organizations. 0
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5 CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
The Rents Go Up in New York's Public Housing
T
HE NEW YORK CITY HOUSING
Authority, the last hold out against rent
increases for federally subsidized housing
ordered by the Reagan Congress of 1981,
quietly began collecting the higher rents last
month. At the beginning of May, the
Authority started to phase in the graduated
rent hikes for its 171,000 tenants. Shortly
after the increases were put into effect, the
last legal hopes for obtaining an injunction
against them were dashed when a panel of
three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Second Circuit voted two to one not
to overturn an earlier federal denial.
New York's public housi ng dwellers,
whose rents have been limited to 25 percent
of their adjusted income since 1969, will see
their rents raised in yearly increments until
1986 when they will reach 30 percent Qf in-
come. They join occupants of other fed-
erally subsidized low income housing in
New York City and around the country who
began paying the increases last year as
ordered by the federal Department of Hous-
ing and Urban Development .
It was New York's Housing Authority, the
trailblazer in the creation of subsidized
housing in the 1930s, which alone balked at
implementing the increases. When a suit
against the rules was filed last September by
a public housing tenant, the Housing
Authority, named as a defendant, turned
around and joined the arguments against
HUD. The plaintiff, Roy Williams, a legally
blind tenant who is the sole support for two
children, charged that HUD had violated his
right to due process as well as his civil rights
by not fulfilling a 60-day public notice and
comment period required by federal
regulations.
The Housing Authority joined Williams,
who was represented by the Legal Aid
Society and pro bono attorneys from the law
firm of Hughes, Hubbard and Reed, in seek-
ing a preliminary injunction barring the im-
plementation of the increases. That request
was denied in federal court and the denial
upheld by the Court of Appeals on May 12.
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
6
However, the lone dissenter on the Appeals
court panel, Judge Walter Mansfield, argued
that HUD was no position to proclaim
the need for expediting the rule since the
agency," he said, had "dragged its feet for
seven months to produce an extremely sim-
ple Voting to uphold the injunction
denial were Judges Edward R. Neahrer and
Thomas Meskill. The Appeals Court deci-
sion is said Walter Kretz
of the city's Corporation Counsel who
argued the Housing Authority'S case for the
injunction.
HUD Threatens Sanctions
Even before that decision, however, the
Housing Authority, under pressure from
HUD, had begun its preparations to start
collecting the higher rents. On November
9, 1982, Housing Authority chairman
Joseph Christian wrote HUD Secretary
Samuel Pierce requesting a waiver from the
rent rules pending the outcome of the ap-
peal. The Authority received a response
from HUD Under-Secretary Phillip
Abrams ordering the Authority to take im-
mediate steps to implement the rules. The
necessary start-up time for collecting the
rent hikes, wrote Abrams, "will be taken into
consideration in considering any sanctions
for non-compliance." While HUD never
specified what kind of sanctions it con-
templated, the Authority took the warning
and scheduled its increases to begin with the
roughly one-third of all public housing
tenants whose annual income reviews for
establishing rent levels take place in May.
This first round of hikes will bring tenants
up to Z7 percent of income and one percent
levies will be added in 1984, 1985, and 1986.
The additional rents collected by the
Authority will not go towards maintenance
needs of existing public housing nor towards
construction of additional apartments, noted
Housing Authority spokesman Roy
Metcalfe. Instead, he explained, they will
go directly to reduce the government's sub-
III sidy for public housing.DT.R.
A
BILL THAT WOULD MAKE USE
of some $300 million in tenant securi-
ty deposits for low-interest rehabilitation
loans for low and moderate income hous-
ing and create a special II-member New
York State Community Investment Corpora-
tion is before this year's legislative session.
Popular with diverse political factions,
and especially with nonprofit community
housing organizations, the legislation stands
a good chance of passing both the Assembly
and Senate, according to Albany insiders,
if its supporters opt not to use it as a bargain-
ing chip in settling other, tougher issues.
Drafted by the New York State Tenants
and Neighborhood Coalition in collabora-
tion with Assembly member Herman D.
Farrell, Jr., Democrat-Liberal of Manhat-
tan. it would create a capital pool consisting
of all tenant security d e p o s i ~ on rental
premises containing three or more units
throughout the state.
A total of between $700 and $800 million
in security deposits statewide is expected to
be available for the pool. But, at any time,
no more than 40 percent of the total, hence
slightly over $300 million, would be in use,
as, under regulations proposed for this new-
ly created corporation, 60 percent of the
total lending pool would have to be held on
reserve.
According to Assembly member Pete
Grannis, Democrat-Liberal of Manhattan
and chairman of its Housing Committee, the
special pool could be used to rehabilitate
somewhere between 14,000 and 28,000 units
of housing, based on average costs ranging
between $10.000 and $20,000 per unit. Gran-
nis also estimates that $56 million would be
spent in wages.
Repayments of rehabilitation loans would
be returned to the corporation in the form
of a revolving fund available for continuing
loans.
Regional Loans .
For adminstrative purposes. the state
would be divided into ten regions. Loans in
each region would be made in proportion to
the total rent security deposits in that area.
Representatives on the II-member cor-
poration board would include the
superintendent of banks, the state attorney
general, and the commissioner ofthe Divi-
sion of Housing and Community Renewal
who would serve ex officio. In addition, the
What Security
Deposits
Could Do
For Housing
governor would appoint eight members-
two of his own choosing and three each on
the recommendation of the Senate and the
Assembly. Of these six members, four
would have to be representative of low in-
come and two of moderate income people.
Stressing that this bill is priority legisla-
tion for NYSTNC this year, its lob-
byist,James Garst. said the importance of
the corporation's board is that, since six out
of the 11 members will be of low and
moderate income, "The board will do what
the bill says, and this is great."
The fund's start-up fee, according to
Grannis's office, could be as high as
$100,000. Deposits would be made in par-
ticipating banking institutions. Some loans.
according to Garst, could be as low as zero
(0) percent.
Bearing interest. in general, as low as
eight percent, loans could be made for the
following purposes:
Rehabilitation to meet local building and
sanitary codes;
Construction loans to nonprofit
developers receiving contracts under
the state Neighborhood and Rural
Preservation Programs;
7
Improvement of home access to the
disabled;
New and first mortgages on newly
constructed single family dwellings up
to ten percent of total loans (to be
allocated chiefly to meet rural housing
needs); and
Construction loans for new multiple
dwellings and for buildings using in-
novative design, such as solar energy,
modular units, and underground con-
struction, up to ten percent of total
loans.
Security deposits, Garst said, would con-
tinue to be the money of the tenant and
would draw interest of at least five percent.
Landlords would continue to receive an ad-
ministrative fee of one percent. Participating
banks would also receive annual ad-
ministrative and loan serving fees of one
percent a year. To date, however, the banks
have not reacted favorably to this proposal .
During a discussion May 9 of this bill at
NYSTNC's tenant lobbying session in
Albany, George Calvert, director of Hope
Community, Inc. , a nonprofit housing cor-
poration in East Harlem, suggested that the
banks were cool to it because they would
only receive one percent interest as oppos-
ed to the 12 to 15 percent they are accustom-
ed to receive now under a standard loan
agreement.
Known as A. 6305 and sponsored by Far-
rell and Grannis, this bill presently has no
Senate sponsor.OS.B.
CITY lIMITS/June-July 1983
Albany Round-up
Rent Curbs for Church and College
Pete Grannis of Manhattan, chair of the Assembly Housing Committee.
A
s THE LEGISLATIVE DEBATE
was heating up late in May, a con-
troversial bill that would extend rent
stabilization protections to the tens of
thousands of "unaffiliated" tenants living in
nonprofit , institutional housing was still in
play during hot and heavy bartering sessions
between members of both houses.
Observers on the scene, however, were
leary of its chances for survival through to
the end of the session in late June.
This legislation, if approved, would also
stop the current abuse of the affiliation
clause by institutions and prevent eviction
for institutional expansion.
Written earlier this year to protect
members of the newly formed citywide
Coalition of Tenants of Nonprofit Institu-
tional Landlords from the "company town"
mentality harbored by some institutions, and
known as the "C.o.T.O.N. P.I.L. Bill," the
legislation is sponsored by Assembly
members Edward Sullivan and Pete Gran-
nis and Senator Franz Leichter-all three,
Democrat-Liberals from Manhattan. The
Coalition represents tenants of some 25 non-
profit institutions.
One Albany insider noted that the tenant
protections outlined here are particularly
unpalatable to institutional self-interests
"mainly because this legislation is ironclad
CITY LIMITS/June-July 1983
regarding the eviction of people for institu-
tional expansion ... It says no. It's tougher
than anything around, even in rent control
[regulations] ."
Under the bill , known as Sullivan-
Grannis, nonprofit charitable institutions,
which include universities, hospitals,
monasteries, etc., would not be permitted
to remove occupied ,sound property from the
rental market. It also defines what a dor-
mitory is and confines exemptions to a tight
definition. A more moderate bill, sponsored
by Grannis, who serves as chairman of the
Assembly's Housing Committee, and Roy
Goodman, Republican of Manhattan, is
seen as having a better chance of passing.
Unlike the Sullivan-Grannis bill , it does not
address closing charitable loopholes but
simply offers legislation reversing or undo-
ing a recent court decision - SLaven v.
Syracuse.
Passed by the Assembly May 2, that bill
would exempt nonprofit institutions from
the Emergency Tenant Protection Act only
if it were planning to use a residence for in-
stitutional purposes, i.e. , staff housing, dor-
mitory space, teaching classrooms. If, on
the other hand, an institution were purchas-
ing a property solely as a business invest-
ment , as in the case of Syracuse University
and its East Side Manhattan brownstones,
8
residential housing, and, hence, the tenants,
would be protected by the existing rent
stabilization legislation.
Universities Expansion Challenged
In the case of SLaven v. Syracuse, tenants
in four brownstones on East 62nd Street
were found not to be protected by the rent
stabilization system with regard to rent in-
creases through a loophole in the E.T.P.A.
regulations of 1974. Both the Supreme Court
and the Appellate Division ruled that the
tenants pay the increases demanded by
Syracuse-in the SLaven case, a triple in-
crease from $731 to $2,250 a month - or face
eviction.
In support of the C.o.T.o.N.P.I.L. bill ,
one grassroots group-the Morningside
Tenants Federation - organizing tenants
against Columbia's takeover of property in
the Morningside Heights area on the Upper
West Side, has circulated a position paper
detailing the repressive .and pejorative
aspects of one unive,sity's, i.e. Columbia's,
affiliation clause.
"Enforcement of this clause," the state-
ment read, "is the single most destructive
and force in the Morningside
Heights area of Manhattan .. It has allowed
Columbia to turn a healthy and viable com-
munity into a company town racked with
fear and resentment ...
"The affiliation clause, and the tax exempt
status it confers upon the university, has
been the immediate incentive in Columbia's
continual acquisition of residential buildings
and the systematic withdrawal of housing
units from the public market and the tax
rolls."
According to the federation'S statistics,
Columbia, the third largest landlord in New
York City, had succeeded by 1980 in taking
2,700 units off the rental market and reser-
ving them exclusively for its affiliates.
Citywide, the nonprofit institutions with
tax exempt status are the second largest
landlord, close behind the city itself with its
vast tax-foreclosed (in rem) empire.
Flynn-Dearie
In related tenant legislation negotiations,
the Senate's Housing Committee, led by
Chairman John Daly, has agreed to some of
the more superficial reforms provided under
the State Tenant Protection Act. Common-
ly Icnown as the "Flynn-Dearie" bill, it is
named for legislators - Senator John
Flynn, Republican of Yonkers , and
Assembly member John Dearie, Democrat
of the Bronx - who for the past few years
have sponsored this legislation that would
expand tenant protection statewide.
As of late May, Daly's Committee was
willing to accept rent registration of all rent
stabilized units, treble damages for willful
rent overcharges, a cap on rent increases
generated by capital improvements, and the
elimination of the Rent Stabilization
Association as the supervisor of the rent
stabilization system.
In return for agreeing to these "cosmetic"
reforms, the Senate Housing Committee
was pushing a vacancy allowance measure
that would permit a 25 percent rent increase
fur new tenants and the elimination of three-
year leases.
In addition, Daly has submitted his bill
- S. 1991 - calling for the reinstitution of
Section 54-D ofthe housing legislation that
would restore the right of a landlord to evict
a tenant when the landlord claims an apart-
ment for "personal use" by himself or fami-
ly members. This bill also guarantees the
right of a nonprofit institutional landlord to
convert housing into institutional use.
The Senate's Housing Committee was also
adamant about refusing to extend the rent
protections guaranteed under the current
E.T.P.A. to tenants residing in small
buildings - under six units - or
geographically to the cities and counties in
the state where tenants are seeking this pro-
tection - Albany, Ulster, and Monroe
Counties.
The Senate was also proposing to
substitute the state Division of Housing and
Community Renewal for the R.S.A. as the
supervisor for the state's rent stabilized
housing.
The Assembly'S Housing Committee sup-
ports the Conciliation and Appeals Board
for this responsibility, while some other te-
nant advocates have suggested the city's
Department of Housing Preservation and
Development as a viable alternative.
Another Senate giveaway would be per-
mitting complete tenant discretion with
sublets, while supporting complete landlord
discretion with assignment of leases.
According to a spokesman at the
Assembly's Housing Committee, the
Senate's current compromise package and
concessions to a few of the Flynn-Dearie
provisions "sound good, but are totally unac-
ceptable" as negotiations now stand.
Earlier in May, Senator Manfred Ohrens-
tein, Democrat-Liberal of Manhattan and
Senate Minority Leader, announced that the
Democratic senators were supporting this
year's version of the Flynn-Dearie bill.
Speaking May 9 to some 300 tenant
leaders lobbying in Albany at the New York
State Tenant and Neighborhood Coalition's
two-day conference, Ohrenstein said if all
else fails, "at the very least" to avoid "a
disaster for tens of thousands" of tenants that
there would be a Ubi-partisan effort" in both
Houses to extend the E.T.P.A. "for a few
. years."OS.B.
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9
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
State Bond Offering for
Participation Loans Planned
S
OMETIME THIS SUMMER, A
two-year-old city, state and federal
effort to increase the supply of low interest
loan funds for financing the rehabilitation
of moderate income housing will be tested
on the tax exempt bond market. Long sought
after by community groups, government and
private lenders as a partial remedy to the
chronic shortage of low-cost long-term
financing, the program has several hurdles
to olear. Not least of these is the confidence
of tenants and neighborhood organizations
needed to match that of would-be investors
in the program and its mission.
The results of the bond offering by the
New York State Housing Finance Agency
could point the way towards " wider use of
moderate rehabilitation programs. It could
also make scarce federal Community
CITY LIMITS/June-July 1983
Development funds go further, and bring
down post-rehab rents for tenants. But at the
same time it threatens to continue controver-
sies that have plagued other loan programs:
subsidized deals to building owners with
checkered records as landlords, and higher
rents for tenants who do not qualify for rent
subsidies amid frequently shoddy repair
work.
The program consists of a complicated
financing package: it parlays a commitment
by a private lender-Citibank-for the
rehabilitation construction loan, federal
Sectio"n 8 rent assistance payments for at
least 20 percent of the buildings' tenants, and
a mixture of the state HFA loan estimated
at a 91h percent bond rate, and federal Com-
munity Develpment funds loaned at one per-
cent through the city's Participation Loan
Program.
10
The loans are insured by the Federal
Housing Administration under its Section
223(f) Targeted Area Preservation (TAP)
program. The 223(f) TAP program takes the
FHA further into moderate rehabilitation-
up to $15,000 per unit - than it has previously
ventured without rent subsidies for all
tenants.
Program Could Be Expanded
"It's a great concept, but it hasn't been pro-
ven," said Jay Lustig, the HFA's director of
housing development. The project's success,
he said, would lead to an expansion of the
program and its endorsement by other
private lenders. Although the HFA stands to
lose money-how much they aren't sure
yet - on its first round because of the offer-
ing's small size, the agency is committed to
further bond sales, added Lustig. Success
could open the previously virtually closed
door of tax-exempt bond financing to non-
profit groups.
At a public hearing on May 12th, the HFA
began the process of clearing seven
buildings for possible inclusion in the bond
sale. Four of the buildings are located in
Flatbush, Brooklyn, where Citibank has
been operating a pilot community develop-
ment office since 1979. Two buildings are in
the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, and
a single Bronx building is located on the
Grand Concourse just north of Fordham
Road. Those neighborhoods are three of
four in the city that are currently designated
for the 223(f) TAP program. The other is
Washington Heights in upper Manhattan.
The seven projects under consideration
represent a range of the buildings in the ci-
ty's Participation Loan pipeline. Three of the
projects in Flatbush, 66 St. Pauls Place,
699-711 and 1038 Ocean Avenue have had
long-standing loan commitments by HPD.
These buildings were earmarked as "proto-
typical projects" for the 223(f) TAP and Sec-
tion 8 moderate rehabilitation programs ac-
cording to Cathy Myerson of HPD's
rehabilitation office. Four newer projects,
however, have not yet received loan com-
mitments from the city. Although closings
for two of them, 2015 Foster Avenue and
1717 Carrol Street are said to be imminent,
two others, mo Grand Concourse and 555
Ocean Avenue, are much further down the
road according to Jim Peters, director of the
Participation Loan program. Without an
HPD loan commitment, they will not be in-
cluded in the sale.
Financing Matchmaker
The person most responsible for shepher-
ding the HFA offering along is former city
housing development commissioner Barry
Zelikson. Zelikson, now a private develop-
ment consultant, was hired by Citibank to
put together the processing and loan under-
writing standards for the 223(f) TAP pro-
gram. He then went on to work as a consul-
tant for developers of three of the projects
and co-developer of a fourth, mo Grand
Concourse. Matchmaker Zelikson has done
much of the footwork between agencies and
has been key in shaping both the HFA pro-
gram and the agency's project selection.
Easing the Rezak Freeze
D
ESPITE A TWO-MONTH-OLD
"temporary freeze" placed by the
city housing department on subsidized
loans to Brooklyn landlord Lawrence
Rezak, a project to be developed by him
is expected to be included in the state
Housing Finance Agency's bond offering
this summer.
The project, 1038 Ocean Avenue, is a
58-unit building which is scheduled to
get a $1,092,500 loan. Apartments will
receive an average of $13,000 of repairs
with the HFA providing close to
$600,000 of the loan and the city almost
$500,000. In addition, the project will get
a J-51 tax abatement and federal Section
8 rent subsidies.
Rezak, owner of over 70 properties in
Brooklyn, is the owner of Midwood
Gardens, an apartment complex in
Borough Park. There, 43 suspicious fires
in two years and hundreds of un repaired
housing code violations have all but emp-
tied the 700 residents. Other Rezak pro-
perties have been shown to have a high
number of incendiary fires as well.
1038 Ocean Avenue was "put to bed too
long ago," said city Participation Loan
director Jim Peters. Although that
building has not had a noticeably bad
maintenance record, another Rezak-
owned building proposed for the HFA
bond sale is 555 Ocean Avenue. That
building, which is to be sold to another
developer, Stanley Reifer, has rated in the
top ten of buildings with incendiary fires
in the North Flatbush area, according to
an organizer who spoke at the HFA hear-
ing. A tenant of 555 Ocean Avenue, Ann
Williams, testified that residents hoped
the loan would bring relief from inade-
quate heat and lack of repairs made by
11
One of Zelikson's clients, Brooklyn owner
and developer Lawrence Rezak, has the kind
of track record that has troubled participa-
tion loan critics for several years. Rezak is
currently under city investigation because
of the fires and deterioration which have
plagued a portion of his substantial real
estate holdings (see box).
The other major criticism leveled against
the city's Participation Loans-that it has
swallowed so much of the city's only low in-
come federal funds- could be mitigated by
use of the bonds. The New York City Com-
munity Development Coalition has long
urged the city to use tax exempt financing
both to lower the costs of the loan-thus
decreasing rents-and to free up Com-
munity Development dollars for genuinely
low income projects.
Charles L. Jones, policy analysis for the
Association of Neighborhood Housing De-
velopers and staff of the Coalition, praised
the bond initiative at the HFA hearing but
warned that the program's substantial merits
would be marred ifloans resulted in benefit
to owners who have engaged in tenant
harassment. DT.R.
the landlord.
"Maintenance of this building has been
deferred," said Brent Sharman, an
organizer working with the North Flat-
bush Arson Prevention Project, "while
tenants have been told to wait for the
loan."
Harriet Cohen, director of the New
York Neighborhood Anti-Arson Center,
told the hearing that studies by the city's
Arson Strike Force have shown a high in-
cidence of arson fires in buildings pro-
posed for subsidized rehabilitation loans.
She called for the agency to certify de-
cent management practices as a prere-
quisite for loans.
Housing Finance Agency staff said
they were awaiting word on the city's in-
vestigation of Rezak, but that the agen-
cy would not make a separate determina-
tion on the charges.DT.R.
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
Citibank Branch Closings Stir Opposition to Banking Trend
Nor BANKING IN BROOKLYN By Tim Ledwith
Alan Spiro. owner of a carpet store on Avenue D in East Flatbush: 'They just said they were leaving.
T
HE RECENT CLOSING 0 F TWO
Citibank branches in the East Flatbush
and Kensington areas of Brooklyn, and the
impending abandonment of another of the
commercial banking giant's branch offices
there, reflects a general move by financial
institutions away from neighborhood ser-
vices . It has also attracted citywide
opposition.
The trend has alarmed many
neighborhood residents and reinvestment
activists. They fear that the recent, hard-
fought gains of many low and middle in-
come communities which were "redlined"
by major lenders for years will be lost as
branch offices withdraw. At a recent
meeting on the problem with Federal bank
regulators, a neighborhood spokesperson
lamented Citibank's actions in light of its in-
volvement in many community reinvest-
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
ment projects. "In East Flatbush," he said,
"it's a story of seduced and abandoned." But
the Coalition Against Redlining (CAR), a
citywide group with several years of ex-
perience in pushing for reinvestment , has
mobilized to let the lender know it won't be
jilted without a fight.
The meeting at which CAR members took
their first step in that direction occurred on
April Zl at Federal Reserve headquarters in
lower Manhattan. It was called by the coali-
tion to bring the branch closings to the at-
tention of government regulators in light of
the Federal Community Reinvestment Act ,
which requires that lenders reasonably meet
the credit needs of their communities.
Neighborhood representatives came seek-
ing to make the regulators recognize that the
recent and future closings constitute a CRA
violation and to demand appropriate action.
12
The hopes for such action were dimmed
somewhat at the outset, when represen-
tatives of the regulator for nationally
chartered commercial banks like
Citibank-the Comptroller of the
Currency-failed to appear. (In fact, of the
one state and four federal bank regulators
expected at the meeting, only the Federal
Reserve, the host group, attended. George
Juncker, chief of that group's Compliance
and Examinations unit, said he was "puzzl-
ed" by the other regulators' absence.) But
CAR members went on to make their case.
At the time of the meeting, none of the
three endangered Brooklyn Citibank bran-
ches had yet been closed. Since then, two
offices-at 9520 Church Ave. in East Flat-
bush and 113 Church Ave. in Kensington -
have shut their doors, and another, at 4215
Ave. D in East Flatbush, is scheduled to
cease business on June 24. Still , as the
meeting opened, representatives of the two
immediately affected neighborhoods
criticized not only the closings, but also the
manner in which they were carried out.
District Manager Priscilla Celano of
Community Board #12 in Brooklyn said a
letter from the board to local Citibank of-
ficials that called the Kensington closing
"completely unacceptable" and proposed
alternative branch sites had gone
unanswered. Celano's counterpart from
Board #17, Rochelle Tenner, said three
meetings to discuss alternatives with local
Citibank representatives, initiated by the
board after rumors of the shutdown at 9250
Church began circulating, "had no
meaning."
The charge of insensitivity on the part of
what one speaker said had come to be
regarded by many area residents as "the
community bank" was amplified by other
CAR members. One of them, Alan Spiro,
whose floor covering store is located across
Avenue D from the branch scheduled to
close in June, noted the particular problems
the situation poses for small businesses.
"Having to transport large sums of cash any
distance," he explained, "is a hazard for mer-
chants who have to make deposits so they
can pay their bills." Spiro went on to describe
the reaction of Citibank officials who heard
of this potential hazard at a meeting of the
area merchants' association: "They just said
they were leaving-no discussion."
And Mary Gallagher of the Flatbush East
Community Development Corporation
recalled that a Citibank representative at an
October meeting with her organization had
said of the area's banking consumers, "They
should be cashing their paychecks in a liquor
store."
While that alleged remark states the case
callously it reflects the general reason for
a current move by institutions like Citibank
away from ordinary depositors. The trend
is also reflected in Citibank's much-heralded
new policy in about 40 branches which
deprives people with deposits under $5,000
of human teller service; they are required
to use automatic teller machines.
That policy and the branch closings are
signs of a retrenchment caused by recent
changes in the banking industry. As Juncker
of the Federal Reserve noted at the CAR
meeting, banks now get much of their assets
from money market accounts, whereas just
a few years ago, much more of their funds
came from small depositors' savings ac-
counts. Many neighborhood branches were
established to attract the savings accounts
the banks needed in the past. But now,
becal)se of increased activity in the money
market , those branches give less of a return
to the banks. So, Juncker observed, in the
eyes of the bankers, by closing branches they
are just "using good business sense."
This point of view is clearly a factor in the
Brooklyn closings. Gallagher of the Flat-
bush East Community Development Cor-
poration pointed out that Citibank represen"
tatives had told her the Avenue D office
would have to shut down because "too many
ordinary people were making too many
small transactions." And in a response to a
letter from Kensington resident Ann Wilson
about the closing at 113 Church, Citibank
Vice President lJ. Redington cited the lack
of return as a major consideration. He wrote
that "after a detailed review of the services
rendered by the branch and a study of the
constant rise in the operating costs it
generates, it was determined that neither the
consumer nor the bank were deriving suf-
ficient benefits from a continuation of bank-
ing services at that location.
Neighborhood activists at the CAR
meeting challenged the amount of benefit
they said the bank required. Said one, "It's
not a question of profitability, but how much
profitability."
Beyond that, speakers from the affected
communities wondered what effect
Citibank's business decision would have on
the local economy.
In a letter to Pauline Wilson, CAR's
Chairperson, sent a week after the meeting,
Citibank Vice President John S. Reed claim-
ed no adverse effects would result. Noting
that his bank is the leading mortgage lender
in New York City, he wrote that "our ex-
perience in Citibank indicates that reinvest-
ment does occur without a facility."
But information about a recent
13
Philadelphia branch closing that was
presented by CAR at the Federal Reserve
suggested otherwise. In the year after that
closing, the figures showed, mortgage len-
ding in the affected area decreased by 42
percent , while overall lending in the city in-
creased by 40 percent.
East Flatbush and Kensington residents
saw in those figures the prospect of an
economic downturn for their
neighborhoods, in the form of declining
mortgage lending coupled with the
withdrawal of small business.
To deal with that prospect, and the
broader banking trend they oppose, CAR
members made three major demands at the
April TI meeting: the establishment of an
interagency task force among bank
regulators to deal with the issue;
government-sponsored public hearings on
the matter; and a moratorium on branch
closings until the effects upon community
credit needs is determined.
Of these three, the only demand which
Federal Reserve officer Juncker had the
authority to consider was the first ; he said
he would advocate the establishment of a
task force.
That group may develop in the near
future. Meanwhile, making good on a pro-
mise to take further action if Citibank's
regulator would not, CAR members took
their case directly to Citibank on May 25,
when they demonstrated at the institution's
corporate headquarters. Earlier in May, dur-
ing the New York State Tenant and
Neighborhood Coalition's annual legislative
conference, CAR representatives also
related their concerns to Assembly member
Herman "Denny" Farrell , who chairs that
house's banking committee. Farrell promis-
ed to consider correcti ve legislation and said
he would hold hearings on the matter in July.
And as the June 24 date for Citibank's next
branch closing on Avenue D drew closer, it
became even clearer that such neighborhood
opposition would be crucial . In late May,
CAR members learned that the Chase
Manhattan bank is planning to shut down
four Brooklyn branches in the immediate
future. 0
CITY LIMITS/June-July 1983
<
TBE TALK OF TBE TOWN
They were the fIrst houses built especially for southern blacks who came north in
search of better lives. The NAACP was hatched there, and Thelonious Monk lived
and made his music there. Today, this piece of black history is a speculator's
dream - as soon as they are rid of the last tenants.
Ruth KirlcJand. tellQlll of 240 Mt-st 64th Strw.
By Susan Baldwin
T
HE FIRST HOUSING DEVELOPMENT BUILT IN last few months has dwindled to between 80 and 90 legal tenants.
the United States for black Americans, Henry Phipps Vacated for the most part during the last few years, the unoc-
Houses on Manhattan's West Side, is fighting an uphill battle cupied apartments now house hard-bitten squatters, drug addicts,
for survival against the wrecker's ball and multi-million-dollar and some former tenants who were evicted for non-payment of
real estate speculation. rent.
A stone's throw from the city's one-stop cultural mecca - Lin- Built beginning in 1906, with part of a $1 million grant by
coin Center - and a block away from the Hudson River, the industrialist-philanthopist Henry Phipps, a partner in the
complex first opened its doors 77 years ago as model tenement development of a vast steel empire with Andrew Carnegie, this
housing for black ex-slaves seeking a better life for their fumilies development was once the talk of the town.
in the urban, industrialized North. "When you said you lived in Phipps Houses, people's heads
Once home to 450 tenant families, Phipps's population in the turned. They listened. It was really something special to live
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983 14
there," recalled Florence Meyer, who in 1915 at the age of seven
moved there w' th her mother and father, married her husband
there, raised two daughters there, and left 60 years later in 1975
after the deteriorated living conditions became intolerable.
bleeds my heart when I go down there to visit because it
was so well cared for; she continued, adding, "Now it's shambles.
But I can say without reservation, my happiest days were spent
there, and it would be nice for the sake of everybody who knows
it and has lived there - there's a lot of history and famous peo-
ple involved - for these houses to be saved and fixed up."
Phipps Houses are still the talk of the town, but unlike Florence
Meyer's fond memories, the talk is from those who view this
as a real estate bonanza. It mainly involves expedient
for emptying the buildings - eight six-story, walk-up tenements
on West 63rd and 64th Streets between Amsterdam and West
End Avenues.
A nonprofit foundation, also called Phipps Houses, owned and
managed the buildings until 1961 when it sold its interests to
finance some other housing ventures. Lincoln Center was under
construction then; and, in the words of the foundation's vice
'chairman, Duncan Elder, "We kept getting offers, and finally
we got one we couldn't refuse."
Since then, the tenants have survived ever deteriorating con-
ditions under 30 successive owners.
"When you get through all those letters and corporations, you
find it's the same person or people," said Nancy Drake, adding,
they may have problems "providing heat, maintaining the
buildings, but they certainly can fmd the lawyers" to carry out
their business schemes. Born and raised at 243 West 63rd Street,
Drake left for a few years but then returned with her young family
to 240 West 64th Street.
Purchased less than three years ago for $1.25 million, the
Phipps Houses are owned by a group of investors known as the
A1mi Group and headed by Albert Schwartz, a power broker
in theatrical circles.
$10 Million Cash Sale
A casual, discreet inquiry into the buildings' ownership, reveal-
ed that , unbeknownst to the tenants, they are currently for sale
"on an informal basis" for $10 million, preferably in cash, ac-
cording to the syndicate's real estate office. An Almi represen-
tative said the group recently turned down an offer of $7.5
million.
"Quite honestly," said Deborah Silverman of Almi, "although
we're having some trouble with the city right now, this is really
going to be something in a couple of years ... You can't
Responding to considerable political pressure from local West
Side politicians, the city's housing department recently brought
suit in housing court seeking the appointment of an Article 7-A
administrator to take the buildings out of the owners' hands.
The city decided on this course of action after housing com-
missioner Anthony Gliedman toured the buildings at the urging
of State Senator Franz Leichter, Democrat-Liberal of Manhat-
tan, who also held a press conference earlier this year to
dramatize the plight of the tenants.
Under the jurisdiction of the administrator, the surviving
families are hoping for the restoration of basic essential services,
such as heat and hot water - amenities that have become almost
nonexistent in the past few years even though stipulated by an
earlier legal agreement, made following the most recent rent
strike last year.
According to the tenants' accounts, these services have been
virtually withdrawn since the enigmatic Almi , through its
management arm - Ress Properties, Inc. - took over. Im-
mediately, they assert, this operation started pressuring them
to abandon their homes, sometimes offering them a few h!Jn-
deed dollars, thus paving the way for the current owners to make
a classical buck on the conversion of this property to luxury
housing.
Located at 1585 Broadway, Almi is a private holding com-
pany whose real estate empire includes the R.K.QCentury
Warner Theatre chain.
Its desire to empty these buildiQgs quickly first came to light
a few weeks ago when one of its employees in charge of reloca-
tion tried to make a blanket application for 90 federally sub-
sidized apartments under the Section g program to house these
last tenants at another development on the Upper West Side.
Home to Jazz Musicians
Tenants, supporters, and local politicans are also seeking
landmark designation by the city's Landmarks Preservation Com-
mission to keep their homes from being tom down.
In its 77 years of rich history, Phipps Houses has been home
to such celebrated jazz musicians as the late Thelonious Monk,
whose fiunily moved there in the late 1920s. Monk, who died
in February, 1982, lived there over 45 years.
"A lot of fumous people, musicians, actors, were born there,
but as soon as they became fumous, they moved out," said
Florence Meyer, whose daughter, Edith Miller, a family court
judge, was born on the premises at 240 West 65th Street.
In the early 19OOs, it served as a meeting place for supporters
who eventually formed the N.A.A.C.P. and the Urban League.
Booker T. Washington reportedly visited there when he was try-
ing to interest blacks in running for political office.
Sarah White Ovington, a white social worker from Brooklyn
who was friendly with Washington, alluded to this housing in
her fumous treatise, Half A Man, written in 1911, the same year
the four buildings on West 64th Street were ready for occupan-
cy. In part, it read:
15
"Too much cannot be said of the beneficial effect of good hous-
ing in a colored neighborhood, when under such able manage-
ment as the City and Suburban Homes Company [incorporated
in 1896 by Henry Phipps]. Decent homes under competent
management are absolutely necessary to an improvement in the
Negro quarters of Manhattan and of Brooklyn as well. I can
speak with some authority of the good done by the Phipps
Houses on West 63rd Street , as I lived, for eight months, the
only white tenant in the one hundred sixty-one apartments.
Church and philanthropy had done and were doing excellent
work on these blocks, but a sudden and marked improvement
came from good housing, from the building of clean, healthful
homes for law-abiding people."
Also, this heavily black neighborhood, known as San Juan
Hill at the tum of the century, and specificially West 63rd Street,
provided the inspiration for the first black musical , Shufflin'
Along, written in 1921 by the late Hubie Blake.
Under the leadership of Monk's daughter, Barbara, a founda-
CITY LlMITSlJune-July 1983
tion called the Committee for the Preservation and Elevation
of the Compositions of Thelonious Monk, has done extensive
research into the historical background and importance of this
housing and neighborhood in an effort to preserve it as a per-
manent residence for low income people on the West Side.
Several months ago, the committee signed a memorandum of
understanding with the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center
agreeing to provide historical exhibits related to the development
of jazz. They are also sponsoring a Thelonious Monk memorial
birthday concert June 18 featuring the city's jazzmobile and per-
formances by many celebrated jazz musicians.
During the day's festivities, they also hope, through the ef-
forts of Democratic City Councilwoman Ruth Messinger's of-
fice, to rename this section of West 63rd Street, where at No.
243, the jazz musician lived for 45 years, Thelonious Monk
Place.


The precarious living conditions at Phipps Houses became
a community issue, and then a crisis, about six years ago when,
according to Democratic District Leader Shirley Zaiman, this
once peaceful neighborhood started to have a lot of muggings.
"All of the tenants' associations got together and everybody
agreed - it was a question of security. We had to do something,"
Zaiman recalled. "What we found was that the then new owners
of Phipps were renting to anyone, wherever they could get the
most money. Then we discovered that a million corporations
were involved; the elderly poor there were scared to death. This
one block was destroying the whole neighborhood."
"This was a wonderful place to grow up. It was a nice safe
community with lovely backyards, air and light, interior cour-
tyards, and steam heat when everyone else around there lived
in cold water flats," remembered Judge Edith Miller. "It was
always a family community, people were poor, but they were
strong and proud of their families and community," she added.
Currently, the Almi Group is warehousing apartments: said
Zaiman, pointing out that the owners had already rolled up over
500 violations - many of them life threatening - betore they
were dragged into housing court. .
"So now, they've been fixing like crazy since they went to
court, but they're still not renting apartments," she added.
On a recent Saturday tour of the buildings, the long-neglected
halls were beehives of activity. Men covered with plaster traipsed
in and out of the buildings. The front entrances and hallways
glistened with fresh paint. Usually a smorgasbord of foul smells,
the sidewalk out front had been freshly hosed down.
"I paid the super a dollar for this washing, but they can't fool
anyone. This place is still a dump;' exclaimed Billie James, a
spry, retired nurse-turned-tenant-activist who has spent the past
20 years in her cheerful, tiny apartment at 240 West 64th Street.
"But we must do one thing - we have to stick together now and
keep remembering we have a right to live here.
"We' re in the garden spot of the world, and I, for one, don't
intend to move," she asserted, gesturing to all the neighborhood
amenities from her front stoop.
Cosmetic Repairs
"Let's hope that the judge can see through a coat of paint if
she comes to see the property," said Cole Mobley, a single parent
with two sons who moved into 236 West 64th Street in October,
Phipps Houses Tenants: Rulh Kirlcland, Roseanna ~ s t o n , Cole Mobley, Nancy Drake, Vinunt Drake, Jr. and Billie James.
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
16
Gladys Diaz. tenant of 248 64th Street.
1979. "They can't expect to make up for ten years' of disaster
in a few he added.
"This isn't painting they're doing; it's said Ruth
Kirkland, a resident at 240 for over 30 years. "When I came
here - my husband had been here many years before - it was
real nice. If you needed anything repaired, they came the same
17
day and were waiting for you outside the door when you came
home from work. Now, they don't fix nothing. All they do is
raise the rent, but the last time I had enough. I refused to pay."
Billie James, president of the tenants' association, recently had
to fight off overzealous workmen attempting to tin up her front
window. "But, isn't that a little extreme?" she asked.
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
Billie JamLS. qf 2J ,*st 64th St"et.
Rents in the buildings run from a low of $50 a month to a
high of almost $300 for some tenants who are. controlling more
than one apartment. Quite small in scale, the apartments range _
from two to four rooms. In cases where families have expand-
.. ed, often two of the larger apartments have beeiljoined together.
"The small size was feasible in 1900, but I guess people find
them pretty small, cramped, nowadays," said Barbara Monk., who
lived in her futher's apartment until two years ago when she found
it impossible, "really frightening, to live here alone" coping with
the deteriorating living conditions.
A musician in her own right, Monk stills pays the monthly
rent and hopes to move back into her apartment at 243 West
63rd Street if the 7-A action is approved.
During the recent court appearances, the lawyers for the
owners - the prominent, politically well connected firm of
former M.T.A .. czar Harold Fisher - tried, according to several
observers, to intimidate the tenants out of testifying.
District leader Shirley Zaiman, 'who has accompanied the
tenants in court, also reported numerous delays in hearing the
case which she and others involved believe were politically
motivated. "They hoped to sabotage our strength" by constantly
throwi.ng up extraneous points," she explained. "But, finally, the
tenants testified. The cross-examining was aggressive, but the
judge .is smart. We think she understood what was going on."
Hearing the case is Judge Harriet George who sits in a special
part of the housing court that handles a great deal of the city's
cases.
According to Mobley,' the building was teeming with people
when he came in 1979. The tenants had just won a big rent strike.
The court ordered the landlord to buy an expensive new boiler,
while the tenants were instructed to use the rent strike money to
buy a new roof. In all, almost $200,000 was spent on badly need-
ed repairs.
Hard pressed for money, the owner followed the court's instruc-
tions, then sold the properties. "And then, came the big
speculators," said Mobley. "They paid $1.25 million for all eight
buildings - that's pretty cheap. And they were able to borrow all
the money from the bank."
More than a year ago; Chemical Bank approved two mortgages
for the OWners adding up to almost $17 million.
When asked to detail the bank's reasons for granting this large
sum, their attorney - Adrienne Packer - who appeared for them
in court, refused to comment, stating that she knew nothing about
the fucts behind the decision. Other inquiries at the bank regard-
ing the matter also proved fruitless.
As the breezy Saturday afternoon drew to a close, the full detail
of workmen finally called it a day and packed up their gear.
"Look at that one, we know him, he's a thief, just out of jail.
Do you call that an honest workman? Would you let him in your
place? Hell, no, "exclaimed James, as she pursued him with her
eyes as her guided tour of the ravaged buildings was coming to
an end.
She explained that most of the tenant fumilies, many of whom
i are elderly and live alone, will not let these men into their apart-
III ments to work because of their previous criminal records.
:E
i
. -

According to the tenants, more than 200 families left the
buildings during the bitter winter of 1980 when, if heat came on
one or two days, that was a lot. One older tenant died of
and another hardy one, who came in the early days,
"slept in everything I own and still was cold."
Although they are hopeful about winning the 7-A appointment,
the tenants association is primarily concerned about the buildings'
future after that. The leaders realize that it will be no easy task
attracting maybe as many as 300 or 400 new tenants into vacant
apartments where front doors have been tom off and replaced with
tin,and bathrooms have been stripped of toilet bowls and pipes.
Rudd Lawrence, the city's choice for 7-A, has successfully
managed other difficult buildings that, at first glance, were ex-
pected to fail.
Noting that the city has not set special funding aside, he ex-
plained that, if appointed, he expects to institute a pilot program
in the buildings, namely, a special sweat equity lease under which
half of the rent would probably be abated for a two-year period.
Unabated rents would conceivably start at about $400 a month,
he said.
"There's a political commitment on the part of the city to save
this housing, but so far, the city is not inclined to give a lot of seed
money to it," he added. "Therefore, the future is a big question
mark."
In the meantime, the tenants are crossing their fingers in hopes
that the buildings wori't be sold for the thirty-first time.
Thinking out loud about the buildings' chances for survival and
his own impatience with the real estate shell game, Cole Mobley
asked, "Isn't there some way the tenants can get a big - or a small
- mortgage? Can't we find a foundation willing to help us buy
these as low-cost cooperatives? Or is that dreaming?"
His voice trailed off. The next chapter in the saga remains to
be written. 0
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
18
BUILDING PUEBLO NUEVO
By Tom Robbins
g
Ii<
o
u
TefUJllts oj a tenant managed soon to become a low income
co-op. Left 10 right: Rosalia Otero, Carlos Burgos, Pedro Gines, Julia Albelo, Pueblo Nuevo organizer
Margarita Fournier, Luis Rosario, Arturo Figueroa, Carmen Galvez.
B
UILDING PUEBLO NUEVO - the "New Town" planned
for nine of the Lower East Side's roughest
tenement-covered blocks. has been a hard and frustrating task.
This summer. workers will be finishing up a six-story, brown
brick, box-like structure that sits along Stanton Street between
Pitt and Ridge and juts up to East Houston Street in an el. By
winter it should be holding the first of 172 rent-subsidized, low
income families.
The austere looking building is the sole survivor of an am-
bitious community plan hatched over a dozen years ago to rebuild
19
one of the Lower East Side's poorest sections. From Delancey
Street north to East Houston, and from Pitt Street west to Clin-
ton was slated in city plans simply as a demolition area. The
poor had not fared well in urban renewal schemes to the east
and south where middle income co-ops arose on sites that had
held substantially low income people. Some. two dozen local
groups combined to plan a different fate for the community's
overcrowded blocks. They laid plans for a three-staged. phased
rebuilding that would minimize displacement and provide hous-
ing for those who lived there.
CITY LlMITS/JunEhluly 1983
City approval of the plan was won in 1971, funds
ed for site acquisition for the first new construction. But the NIx-
on moratorium on subsidized housing, followed by the city's
fiscal crisis and a redirection in housing policy eroded most of
that dream. Organizers salvaged some city funds for planning
and preservation, and got a "special improvements" designation
aimed at channeling increased code enforcement, emergency
repairs and low cost loans to the decaying five- and six-story
walkups.
Unable to build with new brick and mortar, the Pueblo Nuevo
Housing and Development Association built in other directions.
As an urban renewal Project Area Committee (PAC) it built te-
nant and block organizations, and set about providing some of
the rudimentary social service advocacy needed in a
neighborhood where incomes reached only 64 percent of
city's median in 1970. It continued to pressure for construction
of the building on Stanton Street, but in the meantime it got busy
building a community.

About twenty-five minutes after its scheduled 7 p.m. starting
time, Wanda Robinson, the vice chair of the Tenants Advisory
Committee, got up and said softly, "Okay, I think we should start
the meeting."
The animated conversations between 17 adults broke off; six
children at the other end of Pueblo Nuevo's narrow storefront
office continued cooing quietly.
Four months ago, tenant leaders of buildings in which Pueblo
Nuevo was working, initiated on their own a new group aimed
at putting their combined energies to work on the area's most
nagging problem - the shortage of affordable, habitable apart-
ments. Even those whose own buildings are well on their way
towards becoming tenant co-ops, and where repairs have final-
ly overtaken years of landlord neglect, decided they wanted to
do something for all of those doubled up and homeless. They
have already approached the Housing Authority to demand an
explanation of why families on welfare are being shunted to the
side of project waiting lists. They have also targeted a local non-
profit housing management group to find out how they can get
on the waiting list for apartments.
Wanda Robinson, who lives with her seven-month-old
daughter, her sister and her mother crowded into a public hous-
ing apartment meant for two, gave the English version of the
report. And Diana Rivera, an officer of a soon-to-be tenant co-
op at 172 Delancey Street that Pueblo Nuevo has helped nurse
through the city's interim lease program, gave the Spanish
translation of a meeting with a Housing Authority official. Heads
nodded vigorously as they recounted the Authority's own estimate
of 17,000 families doubled up in its projects.
Off to the side, Pueblo Nuevo organizer Luis Soler supplied
an occasional hard to translate word, and added a few points.
"This is the tenants' group," Soler said later who, at 24, dates
his tenant organizing in the neighborhood from the age of 14.
"Some of these people are leaders in their buildings, and other
are forced to live with family or friends because there is nowhere
else. They wanted to do something to help each other and said,
'Let's form a committee.'"
"We are a group of people that wants to stay together," said
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
Wanda Robinson who grew up on Clinton Street in apartments
that rented for $50 and now go for si x and seven times that .

Asked what was the most important product of :he group's more
than ten years oflabor on the Lower East Side, bo:h Pueblo
director Dennis Boody and board chair Nestor Cortijo supplied
the same answers: building organizing.
Currently, Pueblo Nuevo has four buildings under' 7-A ad-
ministratorship. Two city-owned buildings are about to graduate
from the interim lease program, and another four are soon to
enter. In addition, another dozen.or more buildings are playing
a cat and mouse game with landlords over rents and repairs. The
organization has confronted some of the worst slumlords in the
Lower East Side's abundant crop. Landlord Patrick Crowe fled
Pueblo Nuevo's turf some years ago after rent strikes disrupted
his tenement milking operations; Morris Malek also gave up and
went elsewhere after locking horns with Pueblo Nuevo organizers.
Boody himself serves as the court-appointed 7-A administrator,
although tenants handle a large amount of responsibility for the
building.
"One of the things Pueblo Nuevo has been best at;' says Boody,
"is leveraging ERP [the city's emergency repair program for private
buildings] with financial assistance from the city's 7-A office. We
get the maximum of $10,000 loan for all the 7-A buildings, but we
still look to ERP for the emergency, critical stuff. We seek the
money wherever we can get it."
Boody came to Pueblo Nuevo in 1978 as an organizer under the
CETA program and became director in 1979. Previously he spent
five years working in a Lower East Side youth program as a VISTA
volunteer. His native Kansas City accent still heavily inflects his
Spanish which startles some newcomers to the office. But he has
woven a tight, supportive group among the organization' ssmall
staff.
Several members of the eleven-person crew started as CETA
workers in the late 1970s and were retained to continue their work
when CETA was killed in 1981. Since her CETA start in '78,
Carmen Losada has l}een offering quiet reassurance and concrete
assistance to the endless stream of people who have come to
Pueblo Nuevo looking to get welfare problems unsnagged or find
housing applications lost somewhere in the system. Homeless
families have been known to be offered the office floor on which
to camp, or sheltered temporarily by staff or board members. "A
lot of our support in the community is because we are still sup-
plying the social services that have been withdrawn from this com-
munity," said one member.
Building organizers Margarita Fournier, Miguel Badillo,
Margie Ortiz and Leonor Calderon have been climbing tenement
stairs, laying the foundations for tenant associations for several
years. Bookkeepers Diana Adorno and Gloria Socorro have helped
construct the vital accounts ledgers needed for the associations
the organizers have spawned.
20
"The organizational work is the single best thing we've done,"
affirmed Nestor Cortijo, a professional photogra!'her who settl-
ed in the Lower East Side in the early 1960s. "We've done such
a good job organizing these folks that even when we lose, we come
out ahead," he said with his customary emphatic tone.
The future of Pueblo Nuevo, Cortijo believes, lies in the
economic development work it plunged into last year along Clin-
ton Street , the area's commercial strip. With Carlos Rivera
organizing the merchants into an association, the group hopes next
year to study the feasibility of launching a co-op super market
or a lumber yard to cash in on some of the private renovation be-
ing undertaken around the neighborhood.

That private renovation so far has brought more heartache than
aid. There's a new breed of landlord in many of Pueblo Nuevo's
buildings. Although younger and better educated, they have shown
themselves adept at the same kind of slumlord hardball as those
who preceded them.
Organizer Miguel Badillo has for over two years been working
with tenants of one of those transitional buildings, 178 Norfolk
Street. The Puerto Rican and Dominican tenants have been con-
ducting an on-again, off-again rent strike against Paul Stallings,
a former Wall Street attorney who told City Limits in 1981 that
becoming an East Side landlord had been a desired lifestyle
change. Tenants have repeatedly agreed in court to hand over rent
monies in exchange for repairs, only to see it wind up in renova-
tions to vacant apartments they can't afford to rent.
"Four times he did it to us! Four times!" cried Manuel Rivera,
a plumber and 28-year building resident, slapping his fist into his
palm in frustration. In a fourth-floor three-room apartment,
Amada Diaz's three children point to the well polished holes in
the wood where rats slip in and out. In the empty apartment above
them, three walls are covered with new sheetrock, a fourth is
stylishly varnished exposed brick. The two-piece tub-in-the-
kitchen bathroom has been combined into one.
"She pleaded (with Stallings) to let her move into that apart-
ment," Badillo said. "He laughed and said to her, 'Can you af-
ford $700 a month?'"
The Norfolk Street tenants continue to meet and plan, hoping
next time to convince Housing Court Judge Harriet George to
give them a 7-A Administrator. They look to Badillo for
assistance, and to one of their own, Ottavio Monroy, a middle-
aged former trade union official from the Dominican Republic,
for guidance. Monroy speaks quietly and convincingly at the
tenant meeting about the need to continue their rent strike. "We
must be careful," he says, "not to talk too much, and do too little."

"Gentrification is the biggest change in the neighborhood that
I've seen; says Lisa Kaplan who worked at Pueblo Nuevo first
as an intern, later as director and now is an active board member.
"I've seen vacant buildings get rehabbed and people moving in
that you wouldn't believe," she says. Kaplan's efforts at trying
to get renovation and construction underway at rents the area's
poor could afford left her with a comprehensive grasp of the
Lower East Side's planning and political problems. Her voice
pipes up at many community meetings and it is not unusual for
her to get nighttime calls from city housing officials seeking ad-
vice on how to move in the Lower East Side's tricky currents.
Resisting the displacement they have seen gentrification cause
has become an increasing concern of Pueblo Nuevo's. In
response, it has applied its broad community base to the political
struggles that have accompanied it. The group's ability to
mobilize large numbers of people around issues has made it one
of the formidable opponents to be reckoned with.
"You can see who needs the housing in this community," says
Dennis Boody, "when you consider the 4,000 inquiries we've got-
ten from families just since the new building went into
construction ."
Strong advocacy of low income housing, and opposition to
some plans they feared would subsidize gentrification, has often
put Pueblo Nuevo out front in many debates. "We can't afford
to isolate ourselves," says Boody, "we have to deal with wider
issues." Relations range from cordial to warm with many elected
officials, although Pueblo Nuevo has one stalwart supporter in
feisty East Side council member Miriam Friedlander.
Funding, a perpetual problem, has come through private
sources such as the New York Community Trust and the New
York Foundation. The group hopes to generate some of its own
revenue from a new management entity for its new building, N.T.
(New Town) Development Corp.
The group also gets funding under the state's Neighborhood
Preservation Program and from technical assistance contracts
with the city. Last year, under circumstances no one understood
to their satisfaction, Pueblo Nuevo was switched from a city
Community Consultant Contract to a series of smaller contracts.
It is hopeful of getting back into the larger contracts. HPD Assis-
tant Commissioner Manuel Mirabal, who administrates the pro-
gram, says the group has done "fine work."
21
Lisa. K.aplan, who was dragged out of former city housing
commissioner Roger Starr's office in the early 70s with other
over a dispute, recalls Starr's appraisal of
the Pr?Ject Area Committee contracts the city then gave out.
"Fundmg the PAC's," he said, "is like giving guns to the PLO."

On a Friday night in mid-May, in the basement of Our Lady
of Sorrows Church, 150 people of the New Town gathered
to celebrate the constructIOn of the new building. Families from
the tenements, Lower East Side co-workers and friends ate a
homemade meal of rice and chicken and watched a
band play for the couples dancing between the tables.
acr?ss the street, a half-moon hung over the fenced-in
constructIOn site where the most visible piece of Pueblo Nuevo
is being built. From the church basement, came the sounds of
the accordion playing for the other Pueblo Nuevo that has been
built on the Lower East Side.O
CITY LlMITS/JunHuly 1983
Lower East Side Discrimination Suit
Takes to the Streets
F
OR THE PAST MONTH, AT
street corners and subway station en-
trances from Chinatown to the Garment
Center, a group of people have been pass-
ing out blue and yellow flyers headlined
with one of the most seductive questions
one New Yorker could pose to another:
"Need a Good Low-Rent Apartment?",
query the leaflets in English, Spanish and
Chinese.
That provocative question is aimed
specifically at clothing and garment
workers, especially those who are
minorities and needle trade union
members. The leaflet states that although
nearly 4,500 cooperative apartments on the
Lower East Side's Grand Street were built
by the International Ladies Garment
Workers Union and the Amalgamated
Clothing Workers with members' dues,
"Few of the apartments went to union
members and almost none to blacks and
Hispanics . .. Since union membership is
integrated racially and ethnically," it asks,
"why aren't the buildings?"
The leaflet blitz is being carried out by
the Lower East Side Joint Planning Coun-
cil as one more tactic in a six-year-old legal
battle to open up the overwhelmingly white
co-op apartments to more black and
Hispanic tenants. The Council is one of
several organizational plaintiffs in a class-
action lawsuit challenging discrimination
at four jointly managed cooperative com-
plexes. The campaign's goal, state the
organizers, is to build pressure on the
unions to help bring about a favorable set-
tlement for the plaintiffs, and ultimately,
for the union's own membership, in the now
stalemated suit.
Two years ago, Federal District Court
Judge Robert L. Carter said he found
discrimination in the sale of the apartments,
but chose not to issue a ruling. Instead, he
urged the parties to amicably reach a set-
tlement. That attempt, however, quickly
failed; and there has been little movement
in the suit for over a year.
When the suit, Huertas et al v. East River
Housing Corp., et al., was filed in lfJ"n,
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
Ralph Lippman, director of Cooperative
Village, the management entity for all
4,500 co-ops, laughs when asked his
response to the Huertas suit. "We are en-
tirely innocent, he says. "We have never
discriminated ."
Average rents at the four developments
are $60 per room, Lippman said, with
equity purchases ranging from $525 to
$950 per room - prices which make cap-
turing a co-op apartment on Grand Street
a financial coup.
Asked for a current ethnic breakdown of
the co-op residents, Lippman responds,
"We've never counted and I don't want to
count now."

Someone who has been trying to keep
count for many years is Amparo Tirado,
director of It's Time, a 16-year-old social
services agency on Henry Street, a block
away from the co-ops and co-chair of the
Joint Planning Council. She says that she
has seen increasing numbers of blacks and
Hispanics quit the Lower East Side in
. ~ frustration from their inability to find the
! housing they seek. She points to civil ser-
, ~ vants, such as transit authority police and
bus drivers who are forced to remain in
public housing even though they are pay-
ing higher and higher rents.
Amparo Tirado and lillian deJesus distributing
flyers on the Huertas suit. Seward Park Houses
are in the background.
the racial breakdown for the co-ops was 98
percent white. Rosaria Esperon, an at-
torney with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense
Fund which is representing the plaintiffs,
says they have not had access to tenant data
since 1980, but it is believed there are
closer to 96 percent whites currently. The
suit cites several figures as justification for
more minority co-op owners on Grand
Street. Blacks and Hispanics now account
for 44 percent of the population of the
Lower East Side; in 1970, they were 35 per-
'cent, and they were 25 percent of those
cleared from the sites to build the two
largest and newest projects, East River
Housing (1,672 units) and Seward Park
Houses (1,728 units) .
22
"I went with my sister-in-law in 1970,"
said Tirado, "to file for a co-op apartment.
They told us there were applications no
more. they said 'Forget it, there is a 20-year
waiting list.'"
Julio Huertas whose name leads the suit,
the owner of a Lower East Side bodega,
first filed 15 years ago but has never heard
from the co-ops.
The Joint Planning Council, which
represents more than two dozen communi-
ty, religious and social service agencies,
has frequently grappled with discrimina-
tion issues in the Lower East Side. In 1973
it backed a successful court challenge to the
rent-up of a public housing project built on
Grand Street across from the co-ops. That
suit, Otero v. New York City Housing
Authority, resulted in It;n in a sixty-forty
split of the apartments, with minorities
receiving the larger share.
"As soon as we finished with Otero," said
Tirado, "we felt we should push for integra-
tion in the co-ops."
Trial on the Huertas suit was held in
1980 with almost a week of testimony from
black and Hispanic co-op applicants. At the
time, said Esperon, the co-op managers
denied ever having practiced
discrimination.
A year later, Judge Carter called the par-
ties together and indicated he would have
to find discrimination. "Carter said that the
case, and the Lower East Side situation
generally, was so bitter, so full of an-
tagonism, he wanted to see the case resolv-
ed amicably. He left it in our hands to find
a remedy," said Esperon.
This quickly proved impossible. "We
were miles apart," said the attorney.
The plaintiffs have held that 40 percent
of the apartments should rightfully go to
minorities. Given a low vacancy rate,
however, it would take at least 20 years to
reach that goal, even using the most op-
timistic figures.
The response to the leafletting campaign
has already begun. Amparo Tirado says
that many people have called or visited the
It's Time office bringing either their own
tales of rejection at the co-ops, or, an
eagerness to learn more about the co-ops'
availability.
There has also been response from the
other side. One anonymous letter stated:
"True [the co-ops] are mostly white, but
most of us are or were union members or
families. We are all East Side families, liv-
ing on the East Side all of our lives. Way
before Hispanics moved in ... HoW come
you people don't say after reaching fifty
percent [of the low income housing], stop?"
The oldest of the Grand Street co-ops is
Amalgamated Dwellings, completed in
1930. In 1939, the "WPA Guide to New
York City" commented that, at $12.23 per
room, "it is said ... few clothing workers
can afford to live there." Amalgamated's
UP TO DATE
AND
llOu ORllOOD
ATION'?

You can combine a City Limits
subscription with a year of the
Association of Neighborhood Housing
Developers' Weekly Reader,
236 apartments were followed by Hillman
Houses with 807 apartments in 1951, nam-
ed in honor of the founder of the ACWU,
Sidney Hillman who also co-founded the
CIa. In 1955 and 1960, the towering
balconied apartments of East River Hous-
ing and Seward Park Houses were built
along the ' south side of Grand Street
stretching from the East River to Essex
Street.
The Joint Planning Council has concen-
trated on the contradiction between the gar-
ment and clothing workers' union continu-
ing financial aid to the projects a.nd the .
unions' own increasingly black, Hispanic
and Chinese membership.
In 1fJ77, JPC member Frances Goldin
recalled, on a 20 degree day after
Christmas, the JPC gathered to lay a wreath
alongside a plaque on Hillman Houses. The
. plaque reads in part, "We dedicate this
housing to union brotherhood."
"I know Sidney Hillman is turning over
in his grave over what is going on here,"
said Goldin confidently.OT.R.
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CITY LlMlTS/June-July 1983
Lovers, Roommates ... and the Landlord
I
T IS INCREASINGLY COMMON
for Americans to live together without
being married. According to the U.S. Cen-
sus Bureau, the number of unmarried
couples tripled during the past decade,
from 523,000 in 1970 to 1.6 million in 1980.
Cohabitating couples are generally about
the same age; have a romantic relationship;
and are most likely to live in metropolitan
areas.
Even though cohabitation has become
more socially acceptable, unmarried
couples still face rampant discrimination in
the housing market. Many landlords point
to a clause, common in -New York City
leases, that limits occupancy of an apart-
ment to the tenant and members of the te-
nant's immediate family. Lovers, they say,
are not family.
Until quite recently, unmarried couples
received legal support from the courts and
administrative agencies. On May 10, 1983,
however, the New York State Court of Ap-
peals - the state's highest tribunal - rul-
ed that there is no public policy against a
landlord including a provision in a lease to
restrict occupancy to a tenant and the te-
nant's immediate family. That decision
flowed from an attempt by a landlord to
CITY LIMITS/June-July 1983
GNE ME. ",",OR.c r<.e: NT
you ARE. CH EATr"'6- ME
oF" MY MONEY AND
YOu'RE. N ~ T Ev E Iv IY\ARItI ED
By Eric Matusewitch
evict Julia Weiss from her apartment at 310
West 72nd Street on the ground that she was
sharing the apartment with an unrelated
person in violation of her lease. The
landlord indicated that Weiss could main-
tain her residence by either ejecting her
c". 'panion - with whom she'd had a "close
and loving relationship" - or bringing him
within the ambit of her immediate family
(presumably through marriage). Weiss con-
tended that the lease provjsion which pro-
hibited her current living arrangement and
the eviction attempt violated the New York
State Human Rights Law, which proscribes
marital status discrimination.
On July 28, 1980, a New York City civil
court judge decided in Weiss' favor and opin-
ed that "to require that she leave because her
relationship lacks the imprimatur of state or
benefit of clergy is to terminate her tenancy
because of her marital status ... A prohibi-
tion against discrimination based on marital
status is consistent with both evolving no-
tions of morality and the realities of contem-
porary urban society." The ruling was upheld
on appeal by the Appellate Division of State
Supreme Court on February 11, 1982 and
reaffirmed by two other courts in March and
May, 1982. The New York State Court of
24
Appeals, as mentioned earlier, upheld the
lanrllord on May 10, 1983.
The ramifications of this decision will be
significant, since it reinstates the policy in
effect in 1980 allowing landlords to evict
because of an unauthorized occupancy. The
American Civil Liberties Union, the New
York State Attorney General's Office, and
various tenant groups, however, have an-
nounced their intention to blunt the Court
of Appeal's decision by seeking a change in
the state human rights law which would
clearly bar discrimination against unmar-
ried couples. There is precedence for this
action at the federal level. For example, in
1978, Congress, exercising its power to
legislatively overrule the U.S. Supreme
Court, amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act
to make clear that sex discrimination in-
cludes discrimination based upon pregnan-
cy. Just two days after the decision, City
Council President Carol Bellamy and
Manhattan Councilman-at-Large Ed
Wallace introduced a bill to amend the ci-
ty's Human Rights Law to protect "bona fide
tenants who have long-term roommates or
guests." Bellamy observed that "housing is
tight here and the city can be a tough place
to live. If people want to share an apartment
for safety or to bear the high cost of rent ,
the law should permit it."
Lovers and the Law
Live-in lovers had received a favorable rul -
ing from the New York City Human Rights
Commission on November 13, 1981. The
case involved a lawyer and a legal secretary
living together in the East Eighties under a
lease only she had signed. The landlord,
discovering the live-in arrangement , told the
two they could either sign a new lease
together at a 21 percent higher rent or be
evicted.
The Commission ruled that the landlord's
action violated the city's Law on Human
Rights. which prohibits discrimination bas-
ed on marital status in housing. Single
tenants who marry their lovers should not,
the Commission reasoned, be treated dif-
ferently from single tenants who choose not
to marry. The agency ordered the landlord
to give the couple a lease that did not in-
crease their rent merely because of their un-
married status. In addition, the landlord was
ordered to pay them $450 for the "mental
anguish, pain and suffering' 'that they went
through because of the eviction threat.
The legal protection available to unmar-
ried homosexual couples in New York City
is even less clear. The New York City and
New York State Human Rights Laws do not
prohibit discrimination based on sexual
preference. In January, 1983, a Queens civil
court judge seized on this fact to uphold the
eviction of a gay tenant living with his male
companion.
An August, 1982, ruling by the Appellate
Term of New York State Supreme Court
(covering Manhattan and the Bronx) ,
however, provided some protection for
homosexual couples. Here, a landlord
brought eviction proceedings against a rent-
stabilized who allowed his unrelated
male companion to move in. The New York
City civil court granted possession of the
apartment to the landlord on account of the
tenant's breach of the "immediate family"
clause. The Appellate Term reversed the
lower court's decision, even though the
landlord had not violated the state Human
Rights Law. Justices Riccobono and Asch
observed that the rate' for rental
apartments in New York City is virtually
nonexistent. "In the housing field, these are
not ordinary times and strict adherence to
technical concepts of landlord and tenant
law which might have justified eviction in
the past is now to be avoided. It is simply
no longer feasible or desirable to
mechanically impose eviction for breach of
the immediate family clause; nor do we
think it productive to spend judicial time
conjuring up artificial distinctions among
various types of sexual, fraternal , and
economic relationships." A similar decision
regarding a lesbian couple was handed down
by the Appellate Division in September,
1982.
Homosexual couples may seek a different
and novel avenue of legal relief from hous-
ing discrimination - adoption. In a 1982
Appellate Division case, a Mr. S. , 32 years
old, wished to adopt as his son his 43 year-
old friend, Mr. H. They had been living
together for the past three years. lease
was in Mr. H.'s name and limited occupan-
cy to the tenant and immediate members of
his family. One of their reasons for wanting
to enter into a "parent-child" relationship
was that their building was about to go co-
op. Because the landlord had taken "some
action against other tenants to enforce that
clause," adoption would serve the practical
purpose of relieving their anxiety that they
might losethe-Lr apartment .
The court granted their adoption petition
on July 8, 1982, since the New York State
Domestic Relations Law "specifically allows
an adult to be adopted ... and unlike other
jurisdictions, sets up no proscriptions about
the ages of the parties." The court also noted
that the couple's purpose for adoption was
neither insincere nor fraudulent.
The "nuclear family" arrangement is no
longer the only model of family life in
America. The realities of present-day urban
life allow many different types of non-
traditional families. It's time that landlords,
judge's, and legislators recognized and ac-
cepted this fact. 0
Eric Matusewich is director of Equal Op-
portunity at the New York City Health and
Hospitals Corporation andfrequently writes
on discrimination issues.
Energy Audits, Specifications and technical
aSSistance, Investigated contractors. Complete line
of conservation projects at discount, Financing
___ options.
BROOKLYN ENERGY COOPERATIVE 562 Atlantic Ave. (near 4th Ave.) 8588803
25 CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
RESEARCH YOUB LANDLORD, Pr. D
Piercing the Corporate Shield
M
ANY OWNERS OF REAL
estate hold their property through a
corporation which they control. The reason
is simple and is similar for other business
endeavors: should the business fail, or in-
cur excessive debts, the liability for paying
back those debts ends with the corporation.
The corporation can go bust, but not the of-
ficers themselves. The law that allows this
is commonly referred to as "the corporate
shield." It also provides for a large amount
of anonymity for the corporate officers.
How do you know what kind of entity the
titleholder of your building is? If the deed
shows the owner or the "party of the second
partHas a name which ends with "Corpora-
tion," or "Corp.;' or Inc. ," then it is a cor-
poration. If the owner's name ends with
"Company," or "Co. ," or ')\ssociates," then
it is either a partnership or business
operating under an assumed or fictitious
name. These businesses are relatively easy
to trace. They must be registered with the
County Clerk in the county where the prin-
cipal office is located.
The County Clerk's' office is located in the
Supreme Court building of each borough.
Ask someone at the counter for the
"Business ~ Certificates Index"
and look up the name alphabetically. The in-
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
dex will show you the filing date which you
can then track down in the certificate
ledgers. The ledger will supply the names
of the principals of the business and their ad-
dresses. Or, also using the filing date, you
can go to the records office in the same
building and examine the actual document.
Corporations guard the identities of their
officers much more closely. This is their
purpose and piercing the corporate shield
is difficult. Corporate flles are located in the
same place as business certificates but in
different ledgers. In some boroughs, cor-
porations are listed in a computer printout;
in others it is necessary to find the date of
incorporation in the ledgers. Although in
Brooklyn, for instance, clerks keep a flle
system on corporations, they admit the cards
are faulty and are really for their own pur-
poses. Usually you will have to look through
one or two ledgers carefully in order to spot
the corporation you want.
Another way to get the date and other in-
formation is to call ahead of time to the New
York Secretary of State's Division of Cor-
porate Records. It's a toll call (518-474-6200)
and frequently hard to get through, but
clerks there are helpful and can quickly
check the corporation by name and provide
its filing date with the state, its county of
26
location, the attorney's name and address
and the address for service of process for
summons (often the same law firm). Also,
if you want to send to the Secretary of State's
office for the incorporation papers the
charge is $.50 per page (Write: Dept. of
State, Corporate Division, 162 Washington
Ave., Albany, N.Y 12231). But copies of the
same papers should be available at the coun-
ty clerk's offices as well.
Using the date of incorporation you can
request the file. The incorporation papers
may, or may not, be listed. And, if listed,
they may be straws - people fronting for the
real owners. They will list the attorney for
the incorporation as well as a description of
the corporation's planned activities (usual-
ly standard boilerplate language for residen-
tial real estate owners). All of this research
may not pan out with the owner's name,but
it will take you a step closer and give you
one or two names to check out.
Limited Partnerships
Buildings for which there has been some
kind of rehabilitation or new developments
may be held by limited partnerships. These
ownership entities allow general partners -
the developer/owner and one or two
associates usually - to share investment
benefits with limited partners. These other
owners are "limited" to the amount of invest-
ment they have made in the development.
Usually what has attracted these people is
the prospect of sheltering other income from
taxes, and you must be in the fifty percent
tax bracket to make it worthwhile. Limited
partnerships are listed in separate ledgers.
In looking them up, be sure to go all the way
to the present in order to catch later filings
for the partnership. When new partners
enter, or others leave, the partnership,
amendments must be fIled. There will also
be a file for the mandatory newspaper listing
of the partnership. You should look at all of
these files in the records office. They will
yield the names and addresses of both
general and limited partners and the amount
of their contributions.
Landlords frequently use related names
for their corporations: combinations of the
first syllables of their first names, family
names or initials. Millionaire Brooklyn real
estate owner and developer Lawrence Rezak
has a Kezar Corp. (Rezak backwards);
developer Sam Lefrak uses a Rakfel Corp.
There is also a landlord style of gallows
humor: convicted arsonist Joe Bald dubbed
one of his realty corporations, Golem - the
Yiddish word for monster. Bald was later
convicted of burning the multifamily
building this corporation owned, which sat
across the street from his synagogue.
Next: Mortgages
TENANT ORGANIZER
Housing Conservation Coordinators has a position
for a tenant organizer. A bilingual person preferred,
fluent in both English and Spanish. Experience
necessary.
Please send resume to:
H.C.c.
777 Tenth Ave.
New York, NY 10019
Or, call Rose at 541-5996.
-Equal Opportunity Employer-
-----------------------
Hearing On Cable T.V. Franchise: Tues-
day, June 21st, at 10:30 A.M. there will be
a special public hearing before the Board of
Estimate on the proposed contracts for wir-
ing Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten
Island for cable television. This hearing is
the culmination of a 31h year-long process
which resulted in the targeting of six cable
companies to negotiate with the city for the
provision of cable communications ser-
vices. The outcome of the negotiations is
the proposed contracts, which cover such
items as: affirmative action and local
employment; targeting local firms for cable
industry business; construction sequences;
community access; and services and pro-
grams to be offered to subscribers.
The contracts are available for public
viewing at the main branches of the public
library in all five boroughs; at the Office of
Telecommunications at 40 Worth Street,
Room 716; and at the Bureau of Franchise
office in the Municipal Building, Room
13m.OPat Swann
The Green Guerillas
Window Box Contest: Window boxes will
light up the city streets this surruner, and The
Green Guerillas will be there to help. As
part of their greening strategy, The Green
Guerillas will direct New York's first win-
dow box gardening contest. Anyone living
in a residential neighborhood can enter her
block in the contest. Prizes will be award-
ed to blocks that show a spirited effort and
a green thumb. Judges will visit entered sites
between July 4th and Labor Day to observe
the streets as they blossom forth.
The Green Guerillas will assist all en-
trants in buying, installing and caring for
their window boxes. The contest is open to
all community groups, block associations,
and interested individuals. Anyone who
wants more information should call
674-8124 or write to: The Green Guerillas,
Window box' Contest , 417 Lafayette Street,
New York, NY 10003. 0
27
. \
{' .I.
.........
J ...
4,.y.
,
, .....
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!- .......
: .. , "
" ,. "
... ".0
i " ;" "
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... 1 ..
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J .... .., -.
. .

...... ..
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I. ':'"
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........... ! ... .... :. ".#
CITY LIMITS/June-July 1983

Sharing Art at Harlem's Studio Museum
By Yvette Moore
THE SOlN) I Sf:W
Roy DeCorava Exhibit
""'C'\ty, ..... '1. !y.) "',...X>:X("!

1.,,"



"'*'r.ro-


Silmeder Cherry. dire('wr of Cooperatil'e Edu('atiol/ Pmgram or rile Srudio Museum.
I
N 1968 THE STUDIO MUSEUM talent of future artists, but to create a
in Harlem opened the doors of a new audience for fine art by teaching
125th Street loft. situated high above a its appreciation. "It's a way of serving
liquor store and a luncheonette, called the community as well as breaking
it home, and began providing work down barriers. as some people think
space and encouragement for contem- that museums are not for them," said
porary Black and minority fine artists: Shroeder Cherry, senior curator and
those ignored and shut out by establish- head of the Co-op Program. "I find,
ed musuems. Six years later it had pro- particularly with abstract work, unless
gressed to the point that the nurtured people have a background in it , they
artists could. in turn, nurture that com- are immediately turned off. Adults may
munity which fed them its energy. say things like 'God,' my three-year-old
The Cooperative School program
enables professional artists associated
with the Studio Museum to teach the
fundamentals of fine art to groups of up
to 17 elementary, junior, and most
recently, high school students in six
one-hour sessions a week for 15-18
weeks. Until March of this year, all of
the participating schools were in
Harlem Community School Districts 5
and 6. Now Rice High School, a
Catholic school of 124th Street, is also
participating.
The program is funded by the Bay
Foundation, the National Endowment
for the Arts and the New York State
Council on the Arts.
Its purpose is not only to develop the
CITY LIMITS/June-July 1983
can do that!'
"We talk about color, structure, form,
and from that we try to build a
background," he adds.
On a Wednesday afternoon, in a fifth
floor classroom at Rice High School,
Tyrone Mitchell, a 1982 Studio
Museum Artist-In-Residence, didn't
focus a colored picture being projected
on a screen on top of the blackboard.
He handed out four colored sheets of
construction paper to his students. One
of the sheets was to be used as a
background.
"What I'm going to ask you to do is,
with your other three sheets of paper
and paste, create on your paper
whatever you see in that picture," Mit-
chell said.
28
"But what is it?" one of the boys ask-
ed. "I thought you were going to show
us a picture and tell us to draw it."
The object of this exercise. Mitchell
explained. was to expand the way these
students perceived what they saw. and
experiment with new ways to recreate
that s.ight , which is the basis of abstract
art.
"They're very involved in art in other
ways," Mitchell said. "G'raffiti , car-
toons . . . When I asked them to bring
in some of their work for me to see,
many of them came in with complete
portfolios-Superheroes. They know a
lot just from doing it. I'd like to expand
on that."

?<

The work of this year's students will
hopefully be displayed in the Studio
Museum next year.
The Museum also sponsors concerts,
lecture series, tours and workshops as
part of its effort to involve the com-
munity. The tours and workshops usual-
ly relate directly to the current exhibi-
tion, and are designed for a wide range
of visitors including preschoolers and
senior citizens. A special stop on the
tour is the Artist-in-Residence studio,
where artists often break from work to
speak with visitors about their project.
"Hands-on" workshops are available for
groups after tours.
Mary Schmidt Campbell , executive
director of the Museum, is responsible
for the development of all programs,
development of the steadily growing
permanent collection, and oversees fun-
draising campaigns. Her most visible
accomplishment has been obtaining a
new home for the Museum at 144 W.
125th St. The five-story building was
donated by the New York Bank for Sav-
ings. It was redesigned and restructured
by the architectural firm of Bond-Ryder
and the construction firm of C.H.
Sanders. Private and public support,
totalling over $1.4 million, paid for the
transformation. The Museum uses the
first three floors and rents out the top
two. D
'The LoDg Default'
Whose Default?
THE LONG DEFAULT- New York City and
the Urban Fiscal Crisis.
By William K. Tabb. Published by Monthly
Re,iew Press . 1982. /53 pages. $6.95
paperback.
A
FEW YEARS AGO IN NEW YORK
City the prospect of municipal loan
default caused a good deal of fear and con-
fusion. With expenses outstripping revenues
and hefty loans steadily coming due, the city
was looking straight down a fiscal chasm
from which only some speedy backPedal-
ing could save it . A standard explanation for
the city's financial plight was offered and
generally accepted: New York had lived
beyond its means, offered its citizens what
few others had and which it could now no
longer afford. In rapid order. city and state
politicians moved to close the gap. For the
first time ever, corporate managers from
private business were brought in to oversee
and reduce spending; federal loan guaran-
tees were sought and eventually won .
Default was averted, the city saved. Ban-
ished behind several surplus budgets and
relatively smooth bond sales, the fear of
default - if not all those fiscal jitters -was
put behind us.
In the city's streets and neighborhoods,
however, there was a different sort of
default. To make sure those noteholders got
paid off, city services were reduced in vir-
tually every area: municipal hospitals were
closed and staffing cut to a bare minimum
at those that remained open; in 1975 alone,
15,000 teachers and school paraprofes-
sionals were laid off; free tuition in the city
university system was abolished; the sanita-
tion and parks departments took 25 percent
cuts in staff mg. By 1978, 40,000 welfare reci-
pients had been booted from the rolls; sub-
way breakdowns - due to deferred
maintenance-tripled between 1977 and
1978; twenty percent of the police force was
lopped off and those retained told to con-
~ sider the costs in time and court appearances
~ before booking anyone.
8 The brunt of the layoffs, service reduc-
~ tions and narrowing educational oppor-
29
tunities fell on the city's growing Black and
Hispanic popl,llation.
For almost a decade, New Yorkers have
been living with the impact of those cuts.
Gradually, the quality, as well as the quan-
tity, of those changes has made itself felt .
One New York, overwhelmingly white,
Manhattan-centered and linked to growing
service and technical industries, has boom-
ed, while another city, increasingly non-
white, pushed to the outer boroughs and still
heavily dependent on basic city services, has
continued to lose ground.
From Abe Beame to Ron Reagan
New Yorkers pondering these two cities
felt a sense of deja vu as Reagan's policies
of untrammeled private enterprise and a
reduced government role via "reprivatiza-
tion" were introduced. A national govern-
ment with some of the country's leading cor-
porate managers at the helm of major agen-
cies was taking the same path as New York
City. If the inequality of New York's "solu-
tions" was still sharply being felt , those same
approaches on a national scale could only
cause havoc.
But what are those economic trends that
have produced not just fiscal crisis in New
York, but nationally as well? And how has
New York's confrontation with its crisis
pointed the way for national policies?
William Tabb has written a compact
analysis of New York's fiscal crisis that
places the city's experience in a national
context. "The Long Default" begins in Abe
Beame's City Hall in 1975 and stretches on
into Ronald Reagan's 1982 White House.
Tabb is one of a group of young radical
economists who have sought to make the im-
pact and meaning of economic events com-
prehensible to those most affected by them.
Ever since the first fiscal tremors were felt
in New York in the mid-l970s, Tabb has been
helping city workers, students, union
members, welfare recIpIents and
neighborhood activists make sense of cor-
porate and municipal wheeling and dealing.
Much ofthe simple and folksy approach he
has brought to numberless radio talk shows,
forums and conferences carries over into
this book.
CITY L1MITS/June-July 1983
The central assumption of the city's
restructuring, as the McGivern Commission
on Finances pointed out in lfJ77, is that
"private investment will be.the critical deter-
minant of the city's future." Who would that
private investment benefit? If only some
New Yorkers, where does that leave the rest?
Hitches in the Plans
Opposition to budget cuts, program
eliminations and neighborhood shrinkage
has caused some hitches in the plans.
Harlem's mi.\itant resistance to the closing
of Sydenham Hospital , the Northside's cam-
paign to save its fire company, the library
Follow-Up
42 ST. BUILDINGS
BEPURCHASED
A
s PREDICTED, BROOKLYN
developer Henry A. Roth on May 13
purchased the defaulted mortgage on his
three buildings in the 500 block of West
42nd Street in mid-Manhattan during a
special foreclosure sale held in the Rotun-
da of the New York County Supreme
Court .
More than $1.7 million is owed on the
mortgage, but Roth, in his new capacity as
secretary, not president, of his 10th Avenue
Development Corporation, purchased the
buildings for a mere $500,000.
Under the terms of the sale, ten percent,
or $50,000, was to be paid in cash to the
court-appointed referee at the time of the
sale. The remainder was to be turned over
to this referee by June 13.
No money changed hands during the
sale; tenant observers predicted that this
pattern would hold true for the future.
Under the terms of the sale, the United
States government has 120 days, beginning
May 13, to challenge the sale or foreclose
on the mortgage.
In addition, Roth, according to the
stipulation of the sale, must pay back taxes
which now add up to almost $200,000.
A check with the city's tax department
April 24 found Roth owing the full amount
in back taxes. Now, three weeks later,
however, an in rem agreement, dated
August 27, 1982, has surfaced in the
records.
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983
sit-ins of the Upper West Side were all ex-
amples of this. City housing activists add-
ed another episode last year with the battle .
ti.)r the right of low income tenants of city-
ownedbuildings to buy their apartments at
the universal sales price of $250, even where
real estate values have soared.
Tabb's book clearly shows that New York
City's crisis was not simply a local spasm
of economic discomfort caused by a too-rich
diet of social services. It was, and continues
to be, part of a massive national contraction
dislocating cities, industries and the people
who live and (try to) work in them.
"The Long Default" points out that New
York's budget reductions helped not only to
In related actions, Roth and four others
found gUilty of harassment and fined by the
city's Rent Control division have gone to
court to overturn these findings and the
fines. The case, after being adjourned
several times, was scheduled to begin May
25 and could drag on indefinitely.
Thomas Daubner, the lawyer who has
represented the tenants in 500 and 502 West
42nd Street in other actions, planned to
enter the case on behalf of the tenants.
In addition, with the occurrence of the
foreclosure sale, Seymour Yanowitz, the
receiver for the property for more than two
years, was removed from this post. This
means that tenants are now expected to pay
rent directly to Roth's outfit.
The city's housing department has filed
papers supporting the appointment of a 7-A
administrator to run the buildings. It is also
currently entertaining an emergency repair
proposal for a new boiler and plumbing to
provide heat and hot water in 500 and 502,
the two buildings that have been without
these services for almost three years.
In addition to being supported by the
Clinton Neighborhood Preservation Office
and the tenants, this heating proposal is also
endorsed by the Housing Committee of
Community Board #4.0S.B.
30
plug leaky budgets ti)r Mayors Beame and
Koch but also provided the basis for the
transformation of the city's econ?mic struc-
ture. That fundamental change aimed at ac-
commodating, as quickly and efficiently as
possible, the changing demands of the grow-
ing service industries both for.labor force
and real estate.
The benefit of Tabb's overview is that it
provides an understanding of how those day-
to-day str'uggles fit into a wider context. If
New York's fiscal crisis serves as a proving
ground for corporate solutions, it could also
test alternative strategies that empower.
people rather than disinheriting
them.DT.R.
7A WON FOR EAST
SmETENANTS
A
FTER A YEAR'S LEGAL BATTLE,
tenants at 1772 Second Avenue and
305 E. 92nd St., recently won a temporary
victory ("Outdueling the Speculators on the
Upper East Side," May, 1983) . In early
May, Judge Harriet George appointed te-
nant leader Jane Foss as 7A Administrator
to work with the other tenants in manage-
ment and repair of both buildings for a trial
period of 30 days.
Although the ruling was welcome news
to tenants, it does not guarantee that the
building will not be sold to another
landlord. At the end of the thirty-day trial
period, the mortgage holders have the legal
right under Article 777, to dissolve the 7A
Administratorship and sell the buildings,
providing that the new owner can prove an
ability to post a bond large enough to make
major repairs and correct the most hazar-
dous violations. It is estimated that a
$50,000 bond would be needed for the two
buildings.
Tenants feel that this amount of financ-
ing is more of a guarantee than a 7A. "A
new landlord who has the money to repair
the buildings right away is probably better
than a 7A who can only get a $10,000 loan
from the city," said Jane Foss. Tenants also
believe the repair stipulation will deter
speculation. "The buildings are mostly oc-
cupied with two organized tenants associa-
tions, which discourages speculators also,"
noted Foss.O Rachel Sanchez
Pratt Center is 20
I
N 1963, WHEN HOUSING AND
neighborhood preservation suggested
colonial-era restorations rather than inner
city revitalization, a small group within the
Pratt Institute's City Planning Department
in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, decided to try
and put planning at the service of the
neighborhoods. Offering a combination of
architectural services, planning surveys,
government monitoring and policy
analysis, the Pratt Institute Center for
Community and Environmental Develop-
ment grew to become a key resource for
budding community groups around the ci-
ty. The growth of that neighborhood
movement has been matched by the Pratt
Center's own development. It has con-
tributed major assistance to the attempt by
neighborhood groups to analyze and in-
fluence the city's allocation of federal
Community Development funds , formulate
stratgies and analyze institu-
tional redlining, and find workable finan-
cial solutions both to individual tenant or
community managed buildings and for city
wide programs.
The Center's Housing Resource Manual
is the main guidebook for deciphering
government programs and locating agen-
cies and assistance. The Center also
demonstrated its commitment to
neighborhood reporting by becoming a co-
sponsor of City Limits in 1978.
Under the directorship of founder Ron
Shiffman, the Center's staff of Brian
Sullivan, Susan Brome, Charley Peterson,
Rex Curry, Rudy Bryant , Cindy Harden,
Peggy Warren, Bob Santoriello, Raymond
Rodriguez; Pat Swann, Marty Munter,
Gary WacIawski and Bill Riley have all
provided different pieces of a rare form of
technical assistance that aims to empower
the neighborhoods and their residents, not
merely to study them.D
Need A PORTER
HANDYMAN

Highly motivated fldults with many years of
experience, some with own tools, and
graduates of a training program concerned
with the needs of Housing Groups and
Landlords who want responsible, competent
employees to look after their investments are
now ready to work.
Skills Area Taught
The Building Superintendent as a
Professionar. .
Responsibilities to his employer, his role,
tenant relations
The Building Superintendent as a
Technician
Carpentry repairs, electrical repairs, plumbing
repairs
* Preventative maintenance of oil burners &
control systems
* Preparation for air pollution and #6 oil
burner permits,
31
This Course is:
* Approved by the NYC Department of
Housing Preservation and Development.
* Taught by instructors who are tradesmen
with extensive teaching experience.
* Administered under auspices of Bronx
Community College Office of Community
Services & Adult Education.
For further information on how you can
hire our graduates, call Mr. Carlos Ramirez
(212) 220-6353. Referrals will be
prescreened to meet your requirements. Our
placement service is free. .
CITY LlMITS/June-July 1983

J O I n
AT 1 ' 1 - 4 E : CE LE e>J: 2ATfON OF ITS
7th Anniversary
et a GALA PARTY and )?)E NE : FIT
FQIDAY..JUNE 17 6'30PM till.3AM
TALLER LATINO Atv1ERICANO
1 9 W 21STQE E T 5E nJND FLOOR
(between , .h e 0th AVE .)
TICKETo ~IOEACl-i
GroJP.5 5 f or $4 0 if purchoeed in advance
music- dancing. enter tainment
band: La Charanaa
de].: Glenn ( Be.rnard' C;
PLUS FQOM 6:DO 1'08:.30 PM:
THE OPENING OF AN f :~I~IT, OFPI-IO~iJ1~O"""S
BY ClTY LIMlIS CONTRtBU1 OR5 OF NEW
YOl2KS PEOPLE) ~OUSING$ NEI6~OOR~OODS.
fOR MOJ: 2EINFORMATION CALL 239- 844-0 1 ODA' (