City Limits Magazine, August/September 1991 Issue

August/September 1991 New York's Community Affairs News Magazine $2.
50
H O U S I N G B U D G E T B L U E S D S L U D G E H I T S T H E F A N
H A R L E M P R E S E R V A T I O N I S T S
eitv Limits
Volume XVI Number 7
City Limits is published ten times per year.
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Rebecca Reich. Turf Companies
Andrew Reicher. UHAB
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Jay Small . ANHD
Walter Stafford. New York University
Pete Williams. Center for Law and
Social Justice
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Editor: Lisa Glazer
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Copyright 1991. All Rights Reserved. No
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2/AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
Budget Blues
Y
Ou know things are pretty bad when the press office at the city's
housing department starts to pencil information on cover sheets
for faxes, erasing the pencil marks and re-using the sheets in an
attempt to save pennies on paper costs.
If only every money-saving device was so simple and painless. In the
aftermath of the budget slashing, the support networks that sustain
neighborhoods are being decimated. Youth services, tenant organizing,
park programs, library hours-all are on the chopping block. In nonprofit
neighborhood groups, many employees are working for reduced payor
no pay at all.
Another victim of the budget process was the promise made by David
Dinkins to include community voices in decision-making. In the hectic
weeks leading up to the signing of the budget, senior citizens groups and
Little League teams from Bedford-Stuyvesant were relegated to protest-
ing in the heat of City Hall park, while professional lobbyists like the
movers and shakers from the Real Estate Board of New York glided into
meetings with top officials. It could have just as easily been the Koch
administration.
Despite the confusion of a revised budget process with much greater
involvement from the City Council, advocates made some important
wins. The community consultant contracts are still being funded, although
at a reduced level. Legal services for welfare tenants in housing court are
being restored. Homeless housing production is still on schedule. Still,
the budget is a moving target and despite sore voices and sinking hopes,
vigilance is still necessary. Small victories may still be reversed.
* * *
On June 25, Theodore Donaldson, a 61-year-old resident of the Bronx,
died in his home. !fthere was ever an unsung hero, it was Donaldson, a
raspy-voiced, self-effacing man who helped tenants in his building and
across the city.
Donaldson was a lifeline for people in need. He was the president of
his tenant association and the lead plaintiff in a Legal Aid Society lawsuit
that is still trying to win the right to counsel for poor tenants in housing
court.
A Korean war veteran with severe arthritis, Donaldson was a regular
presence at the Citizens Advice Bureau, the Bronx Neighborhood Sta-
bilization office, and the Bronx housing court. Sometimes he came
because of his own housing woes-but mostly he was there for other
people, giving support, providing information, steering them through the
city's bureaucratic maze.
City Limits visited Donaldson's home in 1990 for "Shame of the City,"
an investigation of bad landlords. In the Donaldson family'S apartment,
the bathroom ceiling was teetering on the verge of collapse, appliances
weren't working and bedroom windows were covered with sleeping bags
to keep out the cold.
Brent Sharman, a housing advocate who used to work in the Bronx,
knew Donaldson well . He says, "He was one of the most decent men I've
ever met. First and foremost, he was a good neighbor." 0
Cover photograph by Andrew Lichtenstein

FEATURE
A Synagogue Grows in Brooklyn 10
Special favors from the city helped Williamsburg's
Hasidic community buy public land for their syna-
gogue.
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial
Budget Blues ........ ........... .......... .............. ...... ........... 2
Briefs
Report Faults Vanngaurd ...... ........ ........................... 4
A TURA Setback ....................................................... 4
POMP Killed ............................................................ 5
Unfair Workfare ....................................................... 5
Profile
Harlem's Heritage .................................................... 6
Pipeline
The Chopping Block ................................................ 8
Down in the Dumps ............................................... 16
Cityview
Planning Quagmire ................................................ 19
Letters ........................................................................ 20
Harlem/Page 6
Synagogue/Page 10
Dumps/Page 16
CITY UMITS/ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1991/3
REPORT FAULTS
VANNGUARD
A heavily state-funded
Brooklyn social service corpora-
tion lent over $76,000 interest-
free to its employees, according
to a recent report Issued by" the
state inspector general's office.
The report says the group,
the Bedford-Stuyvesant-based
Vannguard Urban Improvement
Association, issued the loons for
"emergency purposes" between
1983 and 1989. Most of the
loons, written on checks cap-
tioned "Emeloyee Relations,"
went to staff in Vannguard's
accounting deportment-the
workers responsible for oversee-
ing the loans repayments-
according to the report.
The report also alleges that
Vannguard Rled for and re-
ceived more than $234,000
from the state Division of Hous-
ing and Community Renewal to
reimburse it for money bud-
geted but not actually spent on
neighborhood redevelopment
contracts.
These filings and the loans
may have violated state laws,
the report states, but the stote
Attorney General's office de-
clined to prosecute.
Vannguard, founded in
1975, is a nonprofit corporation
and has been involved in youth,
senior citizen, adult education
and housing rehabilitation and
weatherization programs in the
Bedford-Stuyvesant area. It
received $1 .9 million in govern-
ment funds in 1988, with more
than three-quarters of its budget
coming from the state. Much of
its state funding comes from
"member-item" appropriations
sponsored by Assemblyman
Albert Vann (D-Brooklyn), its
co-fouder.
Vannguard executive direc-
tor George Glee told state in-
spectors that the loons were
necessary for employees' sur-
vival because the state had not
given them cost-of-living wage
increases, the report says. But
an independent audit revealed
that Vannguard staff salaries
rose 14 percent between 1 986
and 1988, the report says.
Among the loon recipients
was Vannguard's comptroller,
who got a total of $24,000,
including $10,000 on Jan. 20,
1989, according to the report.
She suspended repayments that
October and resumed them in
March 1 990 when the state
investigation began.
Three business office employ-
ees who received a total of 52
loons still owed over $14,000
as of April 28, 1990, a spokes-
man for the inspector general's
office says.
The report also criticizes
Vannguard for generally sloppy
fiscal practices, such as not
r ~ u i r i n g the signatures of
officers on checks up to $5,000,
not cashing state checks on
time, and giving Glee $15,000
to repay cash contributions he
collected for the renovation of a
Vannguard subsidiary's offices.
In its response to the report,
Vannguard's board of directors
stated that it was "unaware of
the nature and extent of per-
sonalloans provided to the
employees" and "will move
promptly to ensure that all loans
are repaid and that the practice
is discontinued immediately."
Glee says he will not comment
on the report because the
board of directors already
responded. Boord chairman
Richard Jones, Jr. did not return
phone calls.
Paul Webster, a spokesman
for Vann, says that the assem-
blyman did not comment on the
allegations when the report was
issued-because the Attorney
General decided not to pros-
ecute--and that it was "un-
likely" that he would now.
Vann, elected in 1975, has
become one of Brooklyn's most
powerful politicians, with his
supporters gradually eclipsing
the old Democratic machine in
the borough's black neighbor-
hoods. He has been chairman
of the New York State Black and
Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus
since 1989. 0 Steven
Wlshnla
ATURA SETBACK
After years of community
protests, a controversial devel-
opment rlan for the Atlantic
Termina Urbon Renewal Area
is now on hold-4lnd Brooklyn
housing activists are working to
update an alternative plan that
features low and moderate
income housing.
In a recent federal district
court decision, Judge Eugene
Nickerson killed a $10.7 million
federal grant for the site be-
cause officials at the Department
of Housing and Urban Develop-
ment (HUD) did not consider the
racial impact new development
could have on the low income,
integrated neighborhood.
"It's illegal to use federal
funds for a purpose that leads to
segregation,but nowhere in
HUD's EOpers was there any-
thing related to the imEOct on
the racial make-up of the neigh-
borhood," explains Russell
Engler, director of the housing
unit at South Brooklyn Legal
Services, which won the case.
The court decision is also a
victory for the ATURA Coalition,
an amalgam of community
groups that has been fighting
massive development plans that
they claim will gentriFY the area.
Along with the Pratt Institute for
Community and Environmental
Development, the coalition has
created and is now revising a
plan that calls for mostly mOder-
ate and low income housing,
parkland and a small commer-
cial district.
Ted Glick, director of the
coalition, says the site's main
developers have "indicated
openness" to an alternative
plan.
Nickerson's decision deals a
serious blow to the New York
City Partnership's plans to de-
velop 643 middle income apart-
ments on the site. The apart-
ments, which would be
affordable to families earning
between $25,000 and
$53,000, were slated to receive
subsidies from part of a $10.7
million Urban Development
Action Grant, according to
Steven Brown, a vice-president
at the partnership.
Various development
schemes for the Atlantic Termi-
nal Urban Renewal Area have
floundered during the 23 years
since the railroad terminal,
rowhouses and a meat market
were cleared off the land. The
most recent and ambitious plans
are being backed by Rose Asso-
ciates, Forest City Ratner Prop-
erties and the city's Public De-
velopment Corporation at the
intersection of Atlantic and
Flatbush avenues above the
underground railroad terminus.
Rose's five-yea r-old plan to
build 1.8 million square feet of
offices, 255,000 square feet of
retail spoce, two parking ga-
rages, a 10-screen cinema and
the aportments has been de-
layed repeatedly by four law-
suits, a temporary injunction (no
longer in place) and the declin-
ing real estate market.
Forest City Ratner joined
Rose in the development venture
this spring. The firm is the
developer of Metrotech, also in
downtown Broaklyn.
Adam Glantz, a HUD
spokesperson, says the $10.7
million remains in a fund set
aside for the project, despite the
court ruling. Agency officials
haven' t decided whether or not
ta appeal Nickerson's ruling.
Meanwhile, the Sports Foun-
dation, a non-profit business
grc:>up, withdrew its proposal to
bUild a sports complex and
arena on a block adjacent to
the ATURA development. Com-
munity hostility to the project
spurred the Sports Foundation's
decision. 0 Andrew White
POMP KILLED
The city's beleaguered Pri-
vate Ownership and Manage-
ment Program, long criticized
for poor supervision, misman-
agement and harassment of
tenants by landlords, has been
cut from the city's housing bud-
get for the coming fiscal year.
The phasing out of the pro-
gram, known as POMP, in
which private firms are con-
tracted to manage and eventu-
ally buy city-owned buildings,
has been hailed by housing
advocates who opposed the
program for years. A new
hybrid program to replace
POMP is bringing a mixture of
optimism and caution.
"It's been a long fight," says
Amy Barnett from the Associa-
tion for Neighborhood Housing
and Development. ''We're
really pleased. Unfortunately,
the buildings in the program will
remain in the program. It's not a
/ ACOR

'I E I.e [J IV\ E
HomecomIng: ACORN members in East New York recently celebrated
the opening of the first buildings in the Mutual Housing Association
of New York. The mutual housing association plans to include 60
buildings in a cooperative of tenant-owned apartments.
total victory."
Joan Wallstein, assistant
commissioner of the city's De-
portment of Alternative Man-
agement Programs, says there
are still 4,500 tenants in 170
buildings in POMP. She says
the funding for renovations in
those buildings has already
been set aside and that POMP
managers will be allowed to
finish renovations on the build-
ings and, if they perform well,
be permitted to buy them.
Tom Gogan, coordinator of
the Union 01 City Tenants, says
the elimination of POMP is "a
giant step in the right direction,
but it doesn't go far enough."
He argues that thousands of
apartments were thrust into
POMP without notice to the
tenants, who should be allowed
to opt out of a "bad program. "
Wallstein responds tnat
tenants were always informed
by HPD about other programs,
such as Tenant Interim Lease
and Community Management,
before being put into POMP.
There are still no details
available on the new hybrid
program, which is being called
the Neighborhood Options
Program (NOP). Wallstein says
she NOP will include
"some of the best things in
POMP," such as the expertise of
private contractors and the "best
things from other programs,"
such as tenant or non-profit
management.
Meanwhile, tenants in cur-
rent POMP buildings continue to
experience difficulties. At 2243
Ryer Avenue, a Bronx building
in the midst of renovation, ten-
ant Nadia Garcia
showed a reporter podlocked
fire escapes and gaping holes
in Roors and walls. Another
tenant, Deborah Colon, noted
that she has to use the toilet in
the aportment of her superinten-
dent and bathe her children in a
bucket. The manager, Bill
Coughlin from Langsam Associ -
ates, responds that he is trying
to "minimize inconveniences"
during the construction process.
Following calls from City Limits,
some services in the building
were restored. 0 Chris Yurko
and Anne Sane-
UNFAIR WORKFARE
New York City is breaking a
promise made to peaple on
welfare who volunteered to sign
up for job training and educa-
tion programs as part of the
federally-mandated welfare
reform effort.
The city told welfare reform
volunteers that they would not
have their benefits cut if they
eventually had to drop out of a
training program. At least
15,000 peaple signed up with
this understanding, but a federal
ruling now says the "no sanc-
tions for volunteers" policy is
illegal.
Advocates who supported
the policy say the federal ruling
deals a si.snificant blow to the
city's welfare reform efforts.
This "sabotages efforts to get
peaple to voluntarily portici-
pate," says Barbara lerzan,
director of a Federation Employ-
ment and Guidance Services
(FEGS) training program for
welfare recipients.
Catherine lall, the head of
Employment Services in the
city's Human Resources Admin-
istration, says letters have been
sent to all 15,000 volunteers
informing them of the change.
Sanctioning of volunteers who
leave their 20-hours-per-week
training programs will begin in
August, she says.
lall insists that welfare
reform participants who have
"good cause" for leaving
programs will not be sanc-
tioned, adding that the city
will try to make the process as
reasonable as possible and
will define "good cause" very
broadly.
Advocates who work with
welfare recipients are skeptical
that the overworked and ineffi -
cient welfare bureaucracy won't
unnecessarily cut off benefits to
women who volunteered for
training but had to drop out
because of sickness, pregnancy
or other reasons.
lerzan from FEGS says the
ruling is a giant step back-
wards. ''What they are doing is
telling women is if you volunteer
you Oecome mandated. That is
a real threat over their heads.
It is saying, 'If you take a
chance, and if it doesn' t work
out, you will be punished for
it.'" 0 Mary Keefe
CITY UMnS/AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1991/5
By Adriana Scopino
Harlem's Heritage
The stiff-backed, stalwart ladies of the St . Agnes
Tenant Association are a force to be reckoned with.
A
n imposing building that
stretches across a full city block
in Harlem, the St. Agnes at 41
Convent Avenue has a large,
airy lobby with marble columns,
marble wainscotting and intricate
plaster work on the ceiling. Designed
by architect Henri
Fouchaux and built in
1908, it has a distin-
guished history and is still
rock solid. The same
could be said of its tenant
association.
Led by a group of eld-
er! y women, the St. Agnes
Tenant Association is ex-
tremely strong, active and
politically savvy. In ex-
istence since 1972, the
association has defended
their building from the
indifference of both pri-
vate landlords and city
ownership. Now they're
learning to run it on their
own under the city's Ten-
ant Interim Lease (TIL)
program.
The struggle of self-
management is enough to
occupy the average ten-
ant association-but not
the St. Agnes. These feisty
advocates are also con-
ducting a full-scale cam-
paign to win landmark
designation for their
building, an effort that is
part of a Harlem-wide at-
tempt to ensure the
neighborhood's historic
significance is acknowl-
edged.
Rose Among Thorns
On a typical week, the St. Agnes
tenants meet on both Monday and
Wednesday nights. The core group
consists of the chairperson, Sophie
Johnson; the recording secretary,
Charlotte O'Neal; and the treasurer,
providing an answer. When asked
why there are so few male officers,
they're more forthcoming. Sophie
Johnson laughs, likening men to
thorns. The one male on the board,
Chaplain Leon Walter, is described as
"a rose among thorns."
Sense of History
The tenacity of the tenant asso-
ciationis partly due to their strong
sense of the building'S history. When
the St. Agnes was first built, Harlem
was predominantly white, but soon
afterwards the population started to
shift and by the 1930s nu-
merous African-Ameri-
cans were moving in. An
early resident at the St.
Agnes was Frederick
O'Neill, a great African-
American actor who had
a brick thrown through
his window by unhappy
neighbors.
O'Neal remembers
when there were murals
and furniture in the lobby,
a mailroom and switch-
board. In those days, the
building's lobby was so
grand that it was photo-
graphed and included in
Andrew Alpern's picture
book, "New York's Fabu-
lous Luxury Apartments."
The St. Agnes Tenant
Association "is saying
that through landmark-
ing we can take control of
our property, our com-
munity, our destiny,"
says Michael Adams,
uptown ac:tivists: Tenant association members (from left) Charlotte O'Neal,
Sandra Mathieson, Inez Stevens and Gladys Tinsley.
The building has gone
mostly downhill since
then. A series of land-
lords let the building de-
teriorate and one of them
stopped paying real estate
taxes for a full decade.
That led to a city takeover
of the property, which
hardly improved the
situation. With thousands
of buildings and limited
maintenance funds, the
city's Department of
Housing Preservation and
Development (HPD) took
a slapdash approach to
repairs at the St. Agnes.
They took out the wrought
iron doors and removed
marble in the lobby to put
in mailboxes the Post Of-
fice deemed unusable.
president of the Upper Manhattan
Society for Progress Through Preser-
vation. They're "stiff-backed, stalwart
ladies," adds Carolyn Kent from the
landmarking committee of Commu-
nity Board Nine.
Louise Palmer. The primary motiva-
tor is Johnson, an elegant woman with
bright red hair and a growing reputa-
tion as a community firebrand. When
asked how old they are, none of these
women has the slightest interest in
Did this stop the preservation efforts
of the tenants? Hardly. They simply
paid to ~ a v e the iron doors replaced,
and enlIsted the help of the City Col-
lege Architectural Center to design
new mailboxes.
The Cornice Controversy
Life is only slightly easier since the
tenants started to manage their own
building; until they purchase the
building, they still have to report to
the city and let HPD make major re-
pairs. Not long ago, HPD wanted to
remove the cornice from the St. Agnes,
a move that could have endangered
the building's bid for landmark status.
The tenants shifted into high gear,
garnering letters of support from po-
litical allies such as Congressman
Charles Rangel and Manhattan Bor-
ough President Ruth Messinger.
They also sought advice from a
restoration expert who said that the
custom-made cornice had not dete-
riorated-and could be cleaned at a
cost of $30,000 less than the city's
estimates for the cornice's removal.
Not surprisingly, HPD eventually de-
cided the cornice could remain-a
clear win for the tenant association.
"They're amazing," says April
Tyler, a community organizer who
has worked with the tenant associa-
tion for about a year. "Just the forti-
tude of the women ... they're really the
vanguard of TIL buildings." Sandy
Katz from the Manhattan Borough
President' s office describes the resi-
dents of the St. Agnes this way: "An
extremely well-organized and focused
group of tenants who have been very
effective in improving their living
environment. They have a lot to be
proud of."
Wrangling with HPD has provided
the tenant association with good
training for their current focus: con-
vincing the Landmarks Commission
to give landmark status to their build-
ing. This is no easy task. The tenants
applied for landmark consideration
last fall but so far they have not been
included on the calender for consid-
eration, even though the July calendar
included 25 Harlem buildings. After
extensive organizing, the group has
finally received a promise from Laurie
Beckelman, the chairperson of the
commission, that the building is going
before the designation committee and
may be put on the calendar before the
winter arrives.
Who defines a landmark?
Underlying the politicking is a
central debate about the nature of
landmarking. A spokesperson for the
landmarking commission, Tracey
Rosen, says decisions are based strictly
on historical, architectural and
cultural significance. Rosen makes it
sound like these are objective criteria,
but this is hardly the case. Commu-
nity advocates say buildings that
helped establish an African-American
middle class or were home to black
cultural leaders are just as important
"They're amazing.
Just the fortitude
of the women."
as a spot where George Washington
stayed overnight. They question why
advocates in Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant have had to fight to win
landmark districts while entire sec-
tions of the Village and the Upper East
and West Sides were landmarked
without much fuss.
At the St. Agnes, these philosophi-
cal and political concerns merge with
practical needs. Sophie Johnson states
it very simply: "We've got 79 units we
don't want to go to pot. We live here,
we don't want to go anywhere else.
We want to preserve our building." 0
Adriana Scopino is a freelance writer
interested in planning issues.
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CITY UMITS/ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1991/7
By Lisa Glazer
The Chopping Block
How budget cuts hit the housing department.
W
eeks after the City Council
approved New York City'S
budget, allocations for the
housing department are still
being finalized-but the human costs
of the budget cuts are painfully clear.
Nearly 500 housing department
employees have received pink slips,
organizers are being laid off from
neighborhood-based housing groups
and tenants living in dilapidated city-
owned buildings are giving up on
getting routine repairs.
"Cuts were taken against almost
every budget line ... we tried to spread
the hits out and make them as palat-
able as possible," says Mark Weinrib,
budget director at the Department of
Housing Preservation and Develop-
ment (HPD).
Housing advocates disagree. They
say many housing development pro-
grams are still moving forward-or at
least holding ground-while housing
preservation programs that prevent
homelessness are absorbing devastat-
ing cuts.
"HPD had a strong hand in where
to make cuts and I question some of
their choices," says Anne Pasmanick
from the Community Training and
Resource Center. "It seems HPD is
giving up it's homelessness preven-
tion efforts."
According to Weinrib, the City
Council did not make major changes
to the housing portion of the mayor's
executive budget, which allocates
$418 million to the expense budget
and $440 million for the capital bud-
get. In the previous fiscal year, the
expense budget totalled $491 million;
this year's capital budget was reduced
from earlier plans to spend $479.5
million. City taxes provide most of
the money for the expense budget and
capital budget funds come from bond
sales.
Budget analysts say there's still a
chance that some jobs and services
will be restored if the municipal
unions agree to postpone increases in
wages and benefits, or if Felix
Rohatyn's Municipal Assistance Cor-
poration agrees to refinance its bonds.
But it's more likely that tax revenues
will continue to decline and new cuts
will become necessary. "We may be
a/AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
hit with another reduction," says
Weinrib from HPD.
Three Uneven Branches
The housing department has three
main branches that do exactly what
their titles indicate-the Office of
Development, the Office of Rent and
Housing Maintenance, and the Office
of Property Management.
The Office of Development is re-
sponsible for much of HPD's capital
budget housing plan, which is the
"We may be
hit with
another
reduction. "
largest housing production and reha-
bilitation program in the nation. HPD
plans to spend $4.8 billion on the plan
between 1992 and 2002; an earlier
version of the plan, which extended
to 1998, was set for $5.1 billion. Capi-
tal spending was always tipped toward
the beginning of the housing program,
so the scale-back is not considered
significant.
Advocates say the opposite is true
for HPD's housing preservation pro-
grams and its management of city-
owned buildings. "They're
abandoning enforcement of the hous-
ing maintenance code in private
housing and they're not doing a lot
better in city-owned housing," says
Amy Barnett from the Association for
Neighborhood Housing and Develop-
ment.
HPD's staff of housing code in-
spectors is being cut by at least 100
positions, leaving little more than 230
inspectors to make nearly 250,000
inspection visits per year. The cuts
are largely because the state slashed
funding for code enforcement from $8
million to $4 million. The governor
has proposed eliminating the funding
entirely next year.
The inspector cuts mean that ten-
ants withholding rent to protest ram-
shackle housing conditions won't be
able to back up their claims with a
recent inspection report when they're
in housing court. "This is going to
lead to more evictions," says
Pasmanick from the Community
Training and Resource Center.
Another area taking a tough hit is
the Office of Property Management,
which oversees 31,500 apartments in
city-owned buildings. A hiring freeze
for managers means that already-
overworked staff are now responsible
for about 330 run-down apartments
each, up from 250 last fiscal year.
Because of maintenance budget cuts,
the backlog for apartment repairs in
city-owned buildings is expected to
exceed 60,000 work orders by the end
of the fiscal year. A pilot program
providing social services for formerly
homeless families is being killed. And
the Capital Improvement Program for
building-wide repairs like new elec-
tricity and plumbing is being cut from
$37.5 million to $23.5 million.
Funding for tenant organizing to
improve housing conditions is also
being severely reduced. Community
consultant contracts for 97 neighbor-
hood housing groups were pared back
from $3.7 million last year to $2 mil-
lion this year. There was no funding
whatsoever for the contracts in the
mayor's executive budget, but money
was later restored by the City Council.
Advocates say housing commissioner
Felice Michetti balked when the funds
were supplied and tried to hand the
community consultant contracts over
to the Community Development
Agency. Weinrib from HPD counters,
"The commissioner always stands up
for her programs. We've taken the
money and we're running the pro-
gram."
As a result of these and other cuts a
number of housing groups are strug-
gling to survive and laying off orga-
nizers. These groups include the
Kingsbridge Heights Neighborhood
Improvement Association in the
Bronx; Gateway Restoration and the
Jackson Heights Community Devel-
opment Corporation in Queens; and
Housing Conservation Coordinators
and the Inwood Preservation Corpo-
ration in Manhattan.
Within HPD, staff shortages are also
becoming the norm. As well as the
layoffs, another 660 positions are being
reduced through attrition.
One cut that signals a win for hous-
ing activists is aimed at the Private
Ownership Management Program
(POMP), which is being eliminated to
save $3.5 million. The POMP pro-
gram, which uses private landlords to
renovate and manage city-owned
buildings, will be replaced by a new
effort, the Neighborhood Opportuni-
ties Program, in fiscal year 1993. (See
page 5.)
Relatively Unscathed
Despite the cuts, some programs
have emerged relatively unscathed.
Development of one- and two-family
homes within the Nehemiah and New
York City Partnership programs is set
to produce nearly 1,500 small homes
this year. The Nehemiah program
builds small homes for moderate in-
come families, while ilie partnership
program caters mostly to middle-in-
come families. The partnership is re-
ceiving $24.5 million this fiscal year
and $ 7.8 million is being allocated for
Nehemiah housing.
Two major new development ef-
forts-the Bradhurst plan in Harlem
and the Saratoga Square plan in
Bedford -Stu yvesan t -are receiving
capital funding for the first time this
fiscal year. The Bradhurstplan, which
includes low, moderate and middle-
income housing, is slated for $23.9
million, and the Saratoga Square plan
in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which in-
cludes only moderate and middle in-
come housing, will receive $10.5
million.
Some of the biggest capital budget
allocations are going to the Vacant
Buildings Program and the Local Ini-
tiatives Support Corporation (LISC)
and Enterprise programs-$71.2 mil-
lion and $60 million, respectively.
The Vacant Buildings program pro-
vides apartments for a mix oflow- and
moderate-income tenants. The LISC/
Enterprise program builds low income
housing with a combination of city
money and federal tax credits. The
program is being restructured to allo-
cate 30 percent of the units for home-
less families.
The Community Management Pro-
gram, which funds neighborhood
housing groups to manage and reha-
bilitate city-owned buildings, is re-
ceiving $33 million in capital funding
for major renovation efforts, an in-
crease from $21 million the previous
fiscal year. However, administrative
costs are not automatically covered
and groups now have to apply for
management fees based on their con-
struction progress. "It's an extremely
risky proposition for us, " says Michael
Rochford, executive director ofthe st.
Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation
Corporation in Brooklyn. "It means
we have to make sure our construction
and rehab moves along quickly."
Housing for homeless families and
individuals has not been reduced
drastically from earlier plans. HPD is
set to provide about 3,600 apartments
for homeless families and individuals
in the current fiscal year. Apartment
production for homeless individuals
in Single Room Occupancy units
(SROs) also remains on schedule. "I'm
very glad about that," says Anne
Teicher, deputy director of the
Mayor's Office of SRO Housing and
Homelessness.
Commenting overall, Susan
Gewirtz, a policy analyst from the
mayor's SRO office, says, "HPD is
taking a lot of cuts in preservation
and management of city-owned
buildings. But it could have been
much worse."O
The next issue of City Limits will
include detailed statistical informa-
tion from HPD on the new 10-year,
$4.8 billion capital budget plan.
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CITY UMITS/AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1991/9
A Synagogue Grows
in Brooklyn
Williamsburg's Hasidic community received blessings from the city
for the nation's largest synagogue-on land that was once public.
BY ELIZABETH KADETSKY
A
fight over an eight-square-block piece of land in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn has crystallized tensions
in a neighborhood known for its uneasy ethnic
mix of Latinos and Hasidic Jews.
The overgrown, garbage-strewn lot sits in the
heart of a 24-year-old urban renewal area dense with
completed housing projects and condominiums in vari-
ous stages of construction. It encompasses the last three
undeveloped parcels in a vast redevelopment district.
"This is a fight for the land," declares Mauricio Hernandez,
a lawyer with Brooklyn Legal Services. "In other coun-
tries they go to armed struggle."
In an unsuccessful lawsuit filed last year, a coalition of
Latino plaintiffs backed by Brooklyn Legal Services
challenged the Hasidic community's plans to build a
religious school, faculty housing and the nation's largest
synagogue on the plot. They also challenged numerous
other developments on Williamsburg
urban renewal land. (See sidebar.)
Portraying the synagogue, school and
housing as representative of a pattern of
discrimination against Latinos, the 1990
lawsuit charged the City of New York and
the city's Department of Housing Preser-
vation and Development (HPD) with
awarding parcels of the urban renewal
land almost entirely to members of
Williamsburg's Satmar community, an
exclusive sect of Hasidic Jews.
10ng-13 years-to contest the city's land use decisions.
They also ruled that the plaintiffs did not prove a pattern
of intentional preferential treatment or violation of the
First Amendment.
Despite this decision, the facts from the plot's history
remain startling. The city and the Department of Housing
Preservation and Development made repeated efforts to
designate and sell the land quickly and quietly to repre-
sentatives of the Satmar Community. City officials obscured
the public review process known as ULURP once, by-
passed it twice and tried to bypass it a third time. That
process, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure,
supposedly ensures public participation in land use deci-
sions. But in this case, city officials gave special favors to
the Satmar buyers of the site-and shut out the Latino
community
City officials refused to participate in this story, point-
ing to the outside possibility that the plaintiffs would
appeal their suit to the Supreme Court. Their lawyer,
Thomas Bergdall,
insists that the
court decisions
prove there was no
wrongdoing.
Yet a history of
successful litiga-
tion by the Latino
plaintiffs, the
Southside Fair
Housing Commit-
tee, suggests oth-
erwise. In 1976,
o
Brooklyn Legal
g Services and the
committee proved
The suit pointed out that every institu-
tional parcel but one was promised to
Hasidic organizations without auctions
or requests for proposals. The synagogue
and school serve an exclusively religious
purpose, so allowing their construction
violated the First Amendment's separa-
tion of church and state, according to the
lawsuit.
Carmen Calderon: "They are building their holy city here. "
in federal district
-, court that quotas
used by the New
York City Housing
Hasidic leaders countered that the city long ago prom-
ised them the undeveloped parcels for the United Talmu-
dic Academy (UTA) yeshiva, which would school 1,500
Satmar boys, as well as housing for the yeshiva faculty and
the grand-scale synagogue of 6,000 seats.
Judges in federal district court and federal appeals
court apparently agreed, and this year rejected the lawsuit's
arguments on the grounds that the plaintiffs waited too
10jAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1991jCITY UMITS
Authority gave
preferential treatment to Hasidic applicants and kept the
Latino population as low as 25 percent. The group refiled
the lawsuit in 1989, after the housing authority failed to
comply with a federal court order. In 1986, the plaintiffs
also proved that the private developers of a senior citizens'
housing complex on the urban renewal land, Good Heart
House, rented almost exclusively to Hasidim. A private
condominium complex, Brooklyn Villas, was challenged

in conjunction with
the synagogue in
1990; the developers
were charged with
marketing housing
almost exclusively to
Hasidic buyers and a
settlement has now
been reached.
Speaking of a pat-
tern of closed-door
meetings, Carmen
Calderon, a leader of
the Southside Fair
Housing Committee,
becomes angry. She
has seen the city sell
land plots to the
Satmar and watched
the neighborhood's
Latino community
decline from 47
percent in 1967 to a
mere 21 percent to-
day. She views the
synagogue as a sym-
bol of the Hasidic
community's demo-
graphic dominance.
"It will establish
them in a strong
way," she says. "The
way we see it they
are building their
holy city here-with
the city's blessing."
sources, because
there was a history
of ethnic tension,
and because city
government had only
exacerbated those
conflicts, the gather-
ing turned wild, ar-
guments breaking
out among audience
members and ani-
mosity soon engulf-
ing the public
meeting in chaos.
Police broke it up.
But lost in the
ruckus and ignored
between agenda
items was the pro-
posal to build the
largest synagogue in
the nation on Site
Four at Bedford
Avenue and Ross
Street. Because of a
series oftypographi-
cal errors, the sev-
enth amendment to
Williamsburg Urban
Renewal Area One
did not appear on the
community board
agenda. A numeri-
cal error in the
agenda and omis-
sions in the written
materials describing
the item made it vir-
tually impossible to
know what the item
CommunIty-bulldlng: An overview of the contested plot of land-the grand rebbe's house was.
e
alderon sees is in the background, the synagogue is under construction. But that didn't
the situation stop the board from
clearly today, grantingapprovalfor
but when events transpired, she and her colleagues the change, a bureaucratic modification that looked be-
had trouble finding out about them. Time and again, city nign while actually being serious. The modification was
officials made plans for the lot on the corner of Bedford key. Because seven years earlier the city had promised the
Avenue and Ross Street without informing the entire com- land to the Satmar's UTA for a project fundamentally
munity. different from this exclusive synagogue, school and hous-
Perhaps the most egregious obfuscation took place at the ing. In 1977, UTA had planned a complex that would be
Taylor Wythe Community Center one February night in far more accessible than this new religious campus. Origi-
1984. It was a public hearing before Community Board One, nally, it would have been a publicly-funded medical
convened to discuss housing in another corner of facility, a publicly-funded nursing home and a school for
Williamsburg, a dilapidated area known as the Southside Satmar girls.
Triangle. "Everyone knew the Satmar had the lock on Site Four,"
Latino activists showed up, ready to demand a fair share says Foster Maer, a lawyer at Brooklyn Legal Services.
of housing. There were city officials from Mayor Edward "They were waiting for the proposal before they would
Koch's administration, already known for its inclination make a big stink about it. That's why the fact they never
toward backroom dealings. And, standing apart from the put forward a proposal was so devastating. They never put
rest, there was a clutch of men in long beards and long coats, forward a proposal to build the largest synagogue in the
wide-brimmed hats and peyes, the leadership of the Satmar country and the Latinos never got a chance to oppose it."
sect known, among politicians, for its unparalleled ability John Dereszewski, chairman of Community Board One's
to deliver a single bloc vote. Land Use Committee at the time of the synagogue amend-
Because the Latinos and the Hasidim saw themselves ment, concedes that the board did not understand the
locked in a struggle for limited housing and public re- amendment. "The synagogue slipped through," he says.
"I don't think anyone vot-
ing on the ULURP for Site
Four envisioned a 6,000-
seat synagogue, but! think
if we had asked more
-questions we probably
would have discovered
that was underneath it.
This probably did not get
the attention it should
have."
work, the change was
designated a "minor"
amendment, and there-
fore not subject to UL URP
review.
The deliberate and
composed Dereszewski
from Community Board
One recalls when he
found out about this, years
after the fact. "The most
outrageous part of the
whole thing was the lack
of public process. The
city just did not want to
make this an overly pub-
lic situation, they prob-
ably feared snags would
develop," he says. "I was
upset because it seemed
to me that it was not a
minor ULURP process. 1
was quite upset that the
board did not know about
it and found out after it
was built. This was just [a
situation where] the city
had ignored the board."
O
ne of the interest-
ing contradictions
is in this saga is how
Q a small religious
T
hat bureaucratic
amendment
pushed through at
a hectic meeting is
a kind of modus operandi,
one of numerous occa-
sions where the public
didn' t know what was
going on. Similar prac-
tices date to 1977, when
the city's housing depart-
ment first decided that the
education arm of the
Satmar, the UTA, could
develop the plot. As was
usual at the time, there
was no public auction or
advertisement of sale,
only a request from the
Satmar to build the nurs-
ing home, medical facil-
ity and girls' school and
an approval from the city.
The city never considered
Latino buyers, then out of
John O,nISDwsId: "The synagogue slipped through."
sect-an immigrant soci-
ety that has resisted
assimilation into Ameri-
the mainstream of development politics.
Word eventually leaked to the Latino community that
the city awarded UTA rights to the site, and activists like
Calderon began optimistically waiting for a medical facil-
ity she and her neighbors could use. That might explain
the shock that rippled through Latino Williamsburg when
bricks started going down on Site Four in the early 1980s.
Those bricks were growing into a tacky, oversized subur-
ban-style home, a residence for the new Satmar grand
rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum.
"Lo and behold," says Barbara Schliff from the Los
Sures housing group, a member of the Southside Fair
Housing Committee. "They just made this change without
anybody finding out about it. It just occurred."
Why weren't the bricks growing into a health facility,
and why didn't Latinos know? Because Robert Wagner,
Jr., then chairman of the City Planning Commission, had
received a personal letter from the vice president of
Congregation Yetev Lev D'Satmar, Sender Deutsch, ask-
ing if it would be okay if they built a house on Site Four
instead. And Wagner had responded yes, sending off a
letter on December 20,1979, only eight short days after the
request had been drafted. Normally, that change would
have warranted a whole new round ofULURP, and mayor
may not have been approved. But with Wagner's handi-
can culture more than almost any other ethnic group-has
an uncanny ability to woo politicians.
This rests on the grand rebbe's power to summon the
support of every voting Satmar Hasid, a population
estimated at 60,000. The Yiddish language newspaper,
Der Yid, continues to run the grand rebbe's political
endorsements prominently, prompting long lines at
Hasidic polling places each election. Throughout the
1980s, UTA also corralled a politically-connected law
firm, former Mayor John Lindsay's Webster &Sheffield,
then also the workplace of Lindsay's former planning
commissioner, Donald Elliot. Sender Deutsch, the Satmar
leader who drafted the letter to Wagner, went on to work
for Webster & Sheffield.
That political weight might explain the unusual access
Rabbi Zvi Kestenbaum, executive director of the Hasidic
umbrella group, the Opportunity Development Assoc-
iation, gained to Mayor Koch's office in 1987 to discuss the
housing concerns ofthe Hasidic community. Or it might
explain a handwritten memo from 1988, attained in the
Brooklyn Legal Services lawsuit, from the deputy com-
missioner of HPD, Mark Willis, to HPD commissioner
Abraham Biderman, requesting help bypassing the envi-
ronmental review that city planning requested for the
final version of the Site Four development.
Documents also show HPD tried to bypass ULURP for
the 1984 change that allowed the construction of the
synagogue, the same change few people knew about be-
cause of the typos. City planning nixed that request.
The housing department bypassed ULURP one final
time, in 1988, when the concluding version of the Site
Four deal was to make its way through the community
board and the planning commission in that bothersome
ULURP process so despised by the city's development
brokers. This occurred despite the fact that HPD officials
repeatedly assured Latino leaders there would be one last
chance to protest the project, when scrutiny would finally
fall on the proposed Land Disposition Agreement (LDA) to
sell the property.
After a f1 urry of correspondence back and forth between
the housing department and the city planning department,
HPD got a letter from the Satmar's law firm, Webster &
Sheffield, explaining the obvious: the Board of Estimate
had already approved the WA in 1979. Webster & Sheffield
argued against a new round ofULURP. It didn't seem to
matter to HPD that the 1979 LDA was for a medical facility
and not a synagogue, a nursing home and not housing. The
agency accepted Webster & Sheffield's logic, bypassing
ULURP, and receiving, once again, the wrath ofCommu-
nity Board One, which only then learned of the plan to
build the synagogue.
"We were shocked when we fortuitously learned ...
that the sale of this property would be approved by the
Board of Estimate the very next day!" wrote Dereszewski
and the chairman of the community board in a letter to
HPD commissioner Biderman. "Absolutely no effort has
been made to inform us of this extremely significant
action. This was, at best, a case of gross negligence on
HPD's part."
Lawsuit Settlements
The Latino community in Williamsburg lost their
court battle against the Satmar synagogue but related
legal actions have brought settlements that set aside
apartments for Latinos and African-Americans. All of
the apartments are in housing constructed on
Williamsburg urban renewal land.
As well as challenging the development of a syna-
gogue, yeshiva and faculty housing on urban renewal
land, the 1990 Southside Fair Housing Committee
lawsuit alleged that the Brooklyn Villas condominium
development was marketed almost exclusively to
Hasidics.
The Brooklyn Villas section of the lawsuit led to an
agreement that 40 moderate income apartments and the
remaining 22 unsold market-rate apartments in the
294-unit project will be set aside for Latinos and Afri-
can-Americans. According to Brooklyn Legal Services,
ini tial advertisements for the development were mostl y
placed in the Jewish press and only two of1,200 initial
applicants were non-white. The Hasidic developer,
Manuel Sharf, was chosen by the city's Department of
Housing Preservation and Development.
The lawsuit also raised questions about the way
Catholic Charities, the United Jewish Organization and
T
he pattern of negligence dates back at least to the
inception of Williamsburg's urban renewal, when,
in 1967 the city decided it would sweep away 66
acres of decrepit Williamsburg and replace it with
something bigger and better. It was the heyday of urban
redevelopment. As in neighborhoods across the city, the
streets and homes in what would become known as
Williamsburg Urban Renewal Area One would soon slip
away into memory, silent, vacant fields replacing the
neighborhood.
Before demolition the population was mixed. Accord-
ing to a survey by the Housing Development Authority,
the predecessor of HPD, 50 percent were Jewish, mostly
Hasidic, immigrants from Hungary who had survived
Auschwitz in 1944 and who planned to reconstruct in
Williamsburg the society they saw in ashes after the
Holocaust. Recent immigrants from Puerto Rico made up
the rest, families seeking work so they could return to their
island wealthy.
Jose Sanchez, a sociologist who works with the Institute
for Puerto Rican policy, remembers childhood visits to his
aunt, who lived in the urban renewal area. "Everyone
would be in the street," he recalls. "Even the Hasidic Jews
and the Latino kids would play. I never thought there
would be this kind of conflict. I remember, I thought it was
interesting that there was so much cooperation and lack of
animosity."
The Hasidic community, long distrustful of change,
reacted to the urban renewal plan with skepticism, fearing
what would become of its housing, its ritual bath and one
significant little synagogue that fell within the borders of
the urban renewal area. It was the first house of worship
built by the grand rebbe Joe Teitlebaum-the leader of all
Satmar Jews and the man who led his flock from Birkenau
the Department of Housing Preservation and Develop-
ment created a complex cross-subsidy plan to create
new housing through the sale of market-rate units on
the urban renewal land, with the majority of units going
to the Hasidic community. The re-allocation of the
Brooklyn Villas apartments addresses some of these
concerns.
Separate Lawsuit
As a result of a separate lawsuit, the next 190 apart-
ments in three New York City Housing Authority
projects-Independence Towers, Taylor-Wythe Houses
and Jonathan Williams Plaza-will be set aside for
Latinos and African-Americans.
Additionally, a total of 38 white families on the
waiting lists for the Bedford Gardens and Roberto
Clemente Plaza developments will be skipped in favor
of Latinos and African-Americans. Bedford Gardens
was sponsored by the United Jewish Organization, a
Hasidic umbrella group. Roberto Clemente Plaza is
owned by a non-profit coalition that includes local
Catholic churches and Hasidic representatives.
These settlements are the result of a 1989 follow-up
of a lawsuit filed in 1976, proving strict numerical
quotas were used to ensure the developments remained
predominantly white. The follow-up charged that a
federal consent decree was ignored. D Usa Glazer
CITY UMns/AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1991/13
to Brooklyn-a beacon for a society that saw its syna-
gogues as symbols of its permanence. The city bought the
building, on the site now slated for the contested syna-
gogue, for $655,274, an inflated price in keeping with the
tradition of paying high for condemned property. UTA
would buy it back 12 years later for only $150,000.
At the time of demolition, city officials set about relo-
cating 5,764 ethnically mixed residents of the urban
renewal area, taking down their names and new addresses
and promising to contact them as soon as massive new
housing projects were constructed. The files would have
ensured those who left could come back, making up a new
neighborhood with a racial mix almost identical to the old.
By the time the four housing projects would be com pleted,
those files would be lost, yet another another significant
bureaucratic slip. As a result, few Latinos returned.
Wilfredo Vargas was a Williamsburg activist at that
time. After the data was lost, he set out to locate the files.
Now an assistant commissioner at HPD, Vargas says,
"You're talking massive paper. When I came over here I
looked for them and we couldn't find them."
The files weren't found and time moved forward. Now
Hasidim are virtually the only residents of the area near
Site Four. Beside the site, the sidewalk provides passage
mostly to men in peyes and wide hats, Hasidic women
pushing baby carriages and chatting to their companions
in Yiddish. For their part, many Latinos stay away, as
Lucy Trujillo, a plaintiff in the legal services suit, told the
courts. She rarely ventures into the neighborhood, though
she used to live there. "Spiritually," she explained, "it is
depressing." 0
Elizabeth Kadetsky is a freelance writer living in Manhattan.
r------------------,
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aren't making anyone happy.
U
sing sewage as fertilizer is an
idea as old as agriculture itself.
But plans from the Department
of Environmental Protection
(DEP) to dispose of sewage sludge on
land have surprised and angered
groups across the city. Although
officials say commu-
nity groups were in-
formed of sludge
planning meetings,
many groups are
complaining about a
process they believe
included little public
input and disregarded
the concept of burden
sharing.
"People don't
places and methods to convert the
material to usable products. Officials
expect the program to cost almost $3
billion over the next seven years and
increase water and sewer rates 80 per-
cent by 1994.
According to the plan, the city will
Two have to process 100 percent of
the Bronx's [sludge] allotment?"
Fair Share?
And in Red Hook, Jerry Armor,
chair of the local community board's
environmental protection committee,
says about 150 people showed up at a
recent meeting in Red Hook when
DEP officials presented the plan. "The
community was vehemently op-
posed," Armor says. "For years the
city has dumped on Red Hook. Putting
both sites within a few blocks of each
other in the same community does
not meet the criteria
of Fair Share."
The Fair Share
rules mandated by the
1989 revision of the
Ci ty Charter are
meant to assure an
equitable distribution
of city facilities. No
neighborhood, the
charter says, should
be forced to bear the
brunt of necessary
government-run op-
erations like sanita-
tion garages, home-
less shelters, or
sewage treatment
centers.
know what's going
on," says John Baxter,
editor of the Rock-
away Press. He lives
near the Edgemere
landfill, which is
slated by DEP as a site
for treated sludge.
Neighborhood resi-
dents, he says, "don't
learn about it until it's
too late. That's what
annoys people."
A big stink: John Baxter in front of the Edgemere landfjJJ, which the city plans to cover
with treated sludge.
The final version of
the Fair Share rules
did not go into effect
until this July. How-
ever, the Dinkins ad-
ministration pledged
"The sludge thing
has hit a nerve," adds John Roberts,
district manager of Community Board
Two in the Bronx, which is set to
include two sludge-processing sites.
New York City's sewage travels by
underground pipes to sewage treat-
ment plants, where most of the mate-
rial is chemically treated and released
into the waterways. The dirtiest, most
untreatable part of sewage is sludge.
New York City currently culls sludge
from sewage and dumps it in the ocean
at a site 106 miles offshore. But a
recent federal law demands that by
July, 1992, the city must stop ocean
dumping and dispose of all its sludge
on land.
Beneficial Uses
The city has adopted the laudable
strategy of finding beneficial uses for
the sludge instead of of incinerating it
or burying it in landfills. However,
officials face major hurdles finding
turn the sludge over to private con-
tractors for treatment and disposal
during the next six years. A little more
than half the sludge will be heat-dried
and turned into pellets that will be
marketed as an ingredient in fertiliz-
ers. Thirty percent will be chemically
stabilized and turned into a clay-like
material that will be spread over five
hazardous city landfills and used as a
sealant. Eleven percent will be
shipped to Oklahoma where it will be
used in agriculture. Another four per-
cent will be dumped in a landfill in
Charles City County, Virginia.
Red Hook in Brooklyn and Com-
munity Board Two in the South Bronx
are slated to receive two sludge pro-
cessing stations apiece. And they are
the only processing sites planned for
each of the two boroughs, according
to DEP. John Roberts from board two
in the Bronx says, "We just feel that's
unfair. Why should Community Board
to try and adhere to
the spirit of Fair Share long before the
rules were finalized.
Despite that pledge, residents
around the city say that they have
only recently learned about the sludge
plans. Community leaders charge that
the city has avoided public input while
it constructs its $3 billion program.
Bronx Borough President Fernando
Ferrer accuses the city of side-step-
ping the uniform land-use review
process, or ULURP, that requires the
participation of community boards
and the borough president in zoning
and land-use decisions. He says DEP
chose a site at Oak Point for a thermal
drying plant without seeking public
input.
So far, the plan to create the landfill
sealant has generated the most oppo-
sition. The process involves mixing
the sludge with a material that kills
any potentially harmful organisms.
Once stabilized and cured, the sludge
resembles clay. The Dinkins adminis-
tration is finalizing details of a $210
million contract to REPNYC, a con-
tractor that plans to treat the waste on
Ward's Island, in the East River near
Harlem. The five landfills to be capped
with the sealant, if the state and fed-
eral governments approve, are
Edgemere in Queens, Brookfield on
Staten Island, the Fountain Avenue
and Pennsylvania A venue landfills in
Brooklyn, and Pelham Bay landfill in
the Bronx.
REPNYC is a joint venture, and one
of the partners is Chemfix, based in
Louisiana. The company has come
under fire because of a shaky track
record and questionable financial ties
to Democratic Party leadership. Nina
Sankovitch, an attorney for the Natu-
ral Resources Defense Council and a
member of the Citizens Advisory
Committee, a board ofrepresentatives
from environmental and community
organizations created by the city to
keep tabs on the sludge project, says
Chern fix has been forced to shut down
its operations in other cities because
of strong odors coming from treat-
ment sites and capped landfills. DEP
officials say that the contract with
Chemfix requires the firm to prevent
such odor problems.
Guinea Pig
But Rockaway residents living near
the Edgemere landfill are not thrilled
about having the new system in their
neighborhood. "I can't imagine
dumfing this stuff and not having it
smel bad, " said Bernard Blum, presi-
dent of Friends of Rockaway. "I really
think they intend to use this com-
munity as a guinea pig."
The DEP still needs approval from
the federal government to use the
sludge-sealant on landfills in the
Gateway National Recreation Area at
Jamaica Bay. "Don't plan on putting
this on the landfill any time soon,"
says John Tanacredi, an official ofthe
National Park Service. "We can't take
something that's unknown to us."
Some people think sludge is not
the only thing that stinks about the
city's deal with Chemfix. Democratic
National Chairman Ron Brown owns
Chemfix stock and is on its board of
directors. Questions have been raised
in the daily press about Brown's po-
litical ties to David Dinkins, his piv-
otal role in bringing the 1992 party
convention to New York City, and the
awarding of the Chemfix contract.
Both Dinkins and Brown have denied
any impropriety.
Sarah Clark, chair of the advisory
committee and a staff scientist at the
Environmental Defense Fund, is con-
cerned about allegations of unusual
trading on Chemfix stock in the days
before the contract was awarded. The
city's Department of Investigations
received information about a stock-
broker in Texas who allegedly told
clients to buy the stock just before
New York announced the firm was a
finalist for the job. First Deputy
Commissioner Richard Daddario said
DOl turned the information over to
the federal Securities and Exchange
Commission, which regulates the
stock markets. The SEC refuses to
comment about ongoing investi-
gations.
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Regardless of who treats the sludge,
Kevin Callaghan, chairman of Queens
Community Board 14's environmen-
tal protection committee, thinks it is
not a suitable cap for toxic landfills.
He wants the city to use a high-quality
clay landfill sealant that will keep
rain and ground water from seeping
through the landfill and washing toxic
chemicals buried there into the envi-
ronmentally-fragile Jamaica Bay. He
says he worries that the chemically-
stabilized sludge cannot do the job.
"We can't afford any more impacts on
this bay," he says.
The city plans to take over sludge
management in 1998. By then, most of
the waste will be composted with
wood chips and sold as fertilizer and
soil conditioner, DEP says. The agency
recently announced seven composting
sites. They are: North Brothers Island
in the South Bronx; two sites in Red
Hook; two sites in Maspeth, Queens;
one in Staten Island's Newark Bay;
and Ward's Island.
The city's ability to sell its sludge
compost depends on a number of fac-
tors. Most important is the level of
heavy metals that remain in the sludge.
New York City'S sludge currently in-
cludes potentially hazardous amounts
of cadmium, copper, lead and molyb-
denum that enter the sewage from
industries. However, according to a
recent DEP report, the heavy metal
There's not much
time left for public
partici pation.
content of the sludge is declining and
now meets state regulations for land
application in all metals except
copper.
Poor Communication
The lack of communication be-
tween DEP, Clark's advisory commit-
tee and neighborhood leaders has
clearly created friction in many com-
munities. The problem is com-
pounded by the speed with which the
city must find a new way to dispose of
its sludge. Advisory committee
members complain that the DEP has
not informed them about contract
negotiations. Community board
members complain that neither DEP
nor the advisory committee have kept
them informed. But advisory commit-
tee members say the boards ignored
notices sent to them for more than a
year. And now, Clark says her com-
mittee and DEP will try to arrange
community meetings to discuss the
plan with a wider range of citizens.
In spite of the looming deadlines,
Clark expects more give-and-take be-
fore details are finalized. "There's
time for public participation," she
says. Butnotalotoftime. Communi-
ties that want a voice in the city's
sludge plan should act quickly. 0
Billy Allstetter is a freelance science
writer.
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By Eldred Hill
Planning Quagmire
N
ew York City's charter gives
community boards the legal
right to plan for their district, a
vital right that few communi-
ties take advantage of. But even when
community boards spend years and
thousands of
dollars devel-
oping a plan,
the future of
their plan is un-
certain at best.
This is the case
in the district
that I used to
manage-Com-
munity Board
Three in the
South Bronx. If
the current
community
board members
do not act deci-
sively, the plan
we painstak-
ingly devel-
.... --
....... '172 .'
ef' "
.........
""11 II.
.........
.... -......
oped may simply languish.
I believe very strongly in the im-
portance of community planning. I
acquired this belief after years of
working in neighborhoods-first as a
fireman in the South Bronx during the
arson years of the 1970s, then as an
employee of the federal Office ofEco-
nomic Opportunity, where I moni-
tored neighborhood anti-poverty
groups. As district manager, I figured
that creating a community plan was
one of the only ways that local resi-
dents could have a strong voice in the
redevelopment of their area.
It took five long years to develop
our community plan, which is com-
monly known as a 197aplan(afterthe
section of the charter that allows com-
munity boards to do planning.) Dur-
ing this time, all relevant city agencies
were involved. Regular presentations
were made to the District Services
Cabinet, which includes the local
heads of city agencies, and their con-
cerns were incorporated into the plan.
Community based organizations
were invited to attend meetings and
were provided with progress reports.
City View is Q forum for opinion
and does not necessarily reflect
the views of City Limits.
Tenant associations as well as elected
officials were involved in our pro-
cess. We aimed to include a cross-
section of our community to generate
a sense of ownership of the plan by
one and all. Staff from the Consumer
Farmer Foundation, which supports
low income housing, were hired as
consultants, and they did an excellent
job furthering our cause.
Much of our work was based on
first-rate statistical studies of the dis-
trict compiled by the Bronx office of
the Department of City Planning. The
staff at that office gave us enormous
assistance and the cooperation be-
tween that office and the community
board helped move the plan forward.
Lip Service from Ferrer
During this time, we also identified
a few people who generated obstacles
to our progress. Most of our local
elected officials helped us out, but,
much to our surprise, Borough Presi-
dent Fernando Ferrer took his time
supporting us. We received a degree
of lip service but little tangible assis-
tance. I personally asked the borough
president whether we could make a
presentation of our plan to the Bor-
ough Board, which includes the
chairpeople of all Bronx community
boards. My request was denied.
At the same time that we were
conducting our planning effort, Ferrer
was leading a much larger, borough-
wide planning effort with the Regional
Plan Association. While our plan
emphasizes the need for new low in-
come housing as well as moderate
and middle income housing, the Re-
gional Plan Association (RP A) report
focuses mostly on middle income
housing. After the RP A report was
released and received favorable pub-
licity, the borough president wrote a
support letter for our plan.
We completed the plan in 1989,
but this was hardly the end of the
road. The plan went to the Depart-
ment of City Planning for approval
and then on to the City Planning
Commission. Extensive delays oc-
curred because of charter revision and
the change in city administration. The
city's lengthy bureaucratic approach
was enhanced by the fear that our
plan could be the first 197a created by
a community board that could be ap-
proved. We're still waiting for a final
decision.
During this waiting time, our at-
tempt to create a community develop-
ment corporation to implement the
plan has died. According to the bor-
ough president's office, community
boards aren't allowed to establish
community development corpora-
tions. Meanwhile, a local develop-
ment corporation established by the
Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, New Direc-
tions in Community Revitalization
(NDI), seems interested in our ideas.
Is this a good thing? Not necessarily.
Political Turf Battle
Community Board Three is in the
midst of a political turfbattle between
blacks and Latinos, and NDI is seen
by many as a vehicle for the Latino
community to further their political
muscle. The community board plan
was intended to help all members of
the community become involved in
the district's redevelopment. We don't
want the plan to benefit just blacks or
just Latinos-we want it to help the
entire community. What's the re-
sponse of the political leadership to
this power struggle? They observe
quietly.
These local events have city-wide
implications. The recent changes in
the city charter give new planning
authority to borough presidents, and
in the Bronx this is cause for concern.
Each borough president has created,
or is creating, a planning department
within their administration. This can
be a wonderful resource. However,
should the borough president decide
to do land use planning for their en-
tire borough, it could mean the sti-
fling of all community board
initiatives.
I understand that Manhattan Bor-
ough President Ruth Messinger uses
her planning department to provide
technical assistance to the commu-
nity planning boards in her borough.
This is an excellent approach, one
that should be followed by the other
borough presidents.
Community boards can negotiate,
demand, exhort and advocate for their
residents. These boards will be ig-
nored, however, until they have a
197a plan with which they can nego-
tiate. This whole process only makes
sense if the plan can truly be imple-
mented. There's no point if commu-
nities get involved and hopeful about
their future, only to find that the plan
they worked to create is sitting on a
shelf gathering dust. 0
Kiss, Kiss
To the Editor:
We're writing in response to your
May editorial, "Sealed with a Kiss."
The Riverside South Planning
Corporation, which we helped form,
was not set up to draft a new com-
promise plan for the Penn Yards site
from 59th to 72nd streets along the
Hudson. It was set up to move the
planning process forward on behalf of
the agreement we had already reached
with the site's owner, Donald Trump.
That agreement was to develop the
site with a 23-acre waterfront park
which will serve as an extension of
Riverside Park to the south; to keep
development down to a total of 8.3
million square feet, of which 6.2
million will be residential (instead of
the developers' original proposal for
14.1 million square feet); and to make
the park possible by moving the
existing elevated West Side Highway
segment away from the water's edge
and down to grade.
The plan that formed the basis of
the agreement among Donald Trump,
several civic groups and the city and
state of New York was a locally initi-
ated effort in which the community
board and local elected officials have
been intimately involved.
The plan originated three years ago
when People for Westpride, working
closely with Community Board Seven,
proposed moving the West Side
Highway down to grade so as to create
an extension of Riverside Park.
After Westpride, the community
board and local elected officials failed
to make headway in a year-long effort
to gain city and state support for the
plan, Westpride sought the help of
The Parks Council, the Municipal Arts
Society and the Regional Plan Asso-
ciation. With their help, and with the
help of the borough president and her
staff, the plan was refined and devel-
oped into a viable alternative to Trump
City.
During the months we worked to
achieve the compromise agreement
with Donald Trump, key members of
Community Board Seven were active
participants in the discussions with
the civic coalition and with the
developer, as was the Coalition for a
Livable West Side. Neither signed on
to the final compromise: the com-
munity board must play its
appropriate review within the uni-
form land use review process (ULURP)
and could not therefore become a party
to a land use agreement before the
ULURP process begins; the Coalition
for a Livable West Side chose not to
participate. The community board
issued a strongly positive statement
when the agreement was announced.
As we move toward a ULURP
submission, we want to stress that the
Riverside South Planning Corpora-
tion and the civic groups which
created it, as well as the developer, are
committed to creating both a superior
design for the development and the
park; and even more important, to
carrying out a planning and design
process that will be open to commu-
nity participation that far exceeds any
such process seen in our city up to
now.
This is an ambitious undertaking.
We welcome City Limits' interest and
concern about its progress and ask
SUPPORT SERVICES FOR NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
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20/ AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
710 WEST END AVENUE
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10025
(212) 222-9946
your readers hel p in making it a reality.
Linda Davidoff
The Parks Council
Peter Wright
Riverside Park Fund
Dan Gutman
Westpride and Riverside South
Planning Corporation
Bruce Simon
People for Westpride
Consolidation Criticisms
To the Editor:
Over the last few months with all
the discussion about the budget and
the impact on community groups and
communities, there is an issue that
hasn't gotten nearl y enough attention.
That issue is consolidation-when a
building is emptied of tenants and
sealed or demolished. This is one of
the few items in the housing budget
that has been increased.
The number of units estimated to
be consolidated during fiscal year 1992
is 600. The Department of Housing
Preservation and Development (HPD)
argues that consolidation is nothing
new. They also say that tenants and
advocates should not be alarmed or
outraged by it because they don't
intend to demolish buildings, but will
instead put them into vacant build-
ings programs. I don't agree.
Neither does Gail Bell. She lives in
a building that HPD has managed (or
mismanaged) for 11 years at St. Ni-
cholasAvenue. She moved therewith
her children five years ago from the
Regency Hotel. Recently, after an
accident which threatened her
youngest daughter's life, Gail really
began to appreciate living in a build-
ing and neighborhood with people
she knows and cares about. When she
cried for help, her neighbors came.
One ofthem saved her daughter's life
and in the hospital over the next week
everyone came to visit. So often and
in such numbers that one nurse asked
if hers was the only baby on the block.
Her building at St. Nicholas Ave-
nue is supposed to be vacated along
with the three adjoining ones that are
also city-owned. Gail doesn't know
what she would have done if she lived
in a welfare hotel or if she lived in
another building where she didn't
know anyone. I don't know either.
I do know that some of Gail's neigh-
bors-Christeen Kiel, Farice McLean
and Allie Hall-have lived in their
buildings longer than many of us have
lived on this earth and they don't
want to move. I don't think that most
of the residents in the 25 other build-
ings slated for consolidation want to
move or would agree that it makes
fiscal sense to displace them for
development. HPD will be able to
reduce its central management
expenses and increase the number of
new units produced, but at what price?
HPD says every resident will get a
new apartment, preferably in their
neighborhood, but I'm skeptical. I
think people like the residents of St.
Nicholas Avenue will lose their homes
and their friends and end up in
Housing Authority apartments, an
apartment in another city-owned
building (soon to be consolidated) or
a shelter. The latter is most likely.
Most of the current residents wouldn't
be eligible for their own apartments
under HPD's proposed rehabilitation
plans.
The city cannot be allowed to
abdicate its responsibility as landlord
even in fiscal hard times.
April Tyler
Ecumenical Community
Development Organization
Manhattan
Unking Housing and Day Care
To the Editor:
Your recent article on day care
(June/July 1991) highlighted the im-
portance of coordinating the
development of new day care facilities
with the city's housing programs.
Separate from the proposed Local Ini-
tiative Support Corporation initiative,
the Department of Housing Preserva-
tion and Development (HPD) and the
Agency for Child Development (ACD)
are already collaborating on the de-
velopment of fully licensed day care
facilities in our Special Initiatives,
Construction Management and Vacant
Cluster programs. I am pleased to
report that one center already has been
completed and is open, and that six
additional centers are completing
construction.
In addition, HPD, ACD and the
Board of Education are collaborating
on the development of four early
childhood centers which will pro-
vide day care, Project Giant Step and
kindergarten through second grade
classrooms. The first center is
scheduled to break ground this sum-
mer. Finally, ACD currently is
designing its first new construction
facility adjacent to a large housing site
in the South Bronx. All told, 56 day
care classrooms, with a capacity to
serve approximately 1,150 children,
already are in development.
Felice Michetti
Commissioner
Department of Housing Preservation
and Development
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New York, NY 10038
2121406-3320
C ommunity D evelopment L,gal AsSistance C enter
a project of the Council of New York low Associates, a n o n p r o ~ 1 organization
Real Estate, Corporate and Tax Legal Representation to Organizations
Tax Syndications Mutual Housing Associations
Homeless Housing Economic Development
HDFCs Not-For-profit corporations
Community Development Credit Unions and Loan Funds
99 Hudson Street, 14th Fir., NYC, 10013 (212) 219-1800
REACH 20,000
NEW YORK DECISION-MAKERS
NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT
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MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS 0 COMMERCIAL DEVELOPERS
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please call 212/925-9820.
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CONGRATULATIONS!
The East New York Savings Bank is pleased to announce that the following
community organizations in our service area (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and
Nassau) have been chosen to receive Community Action Assistance Grants from
the Bank for their neighborhood preservation and improvement endeavors:
Allen A.M.E. Neighborhood Preservation
and Development Corporation
Alley Pond Environmental Center
Alliance of Queens Artists
Arts Connection, Inc.
Asian Americans for Equality
Association of Community Organizations
for Reform Now
Astella Development Corporation
Astoria Restoration Association
Atlantic Avenue Association Local
Development Corporation
BEC New Communities HDFC, Inc.
Bridge Street Community Center, Inc.
Brighton Neighborhood Association
Broad Channel Civic Association
Brooklyn Arts and Cultural Association
Canarsie Neighborhood Development
Corporation
Carroll Gardens Association, Inc.
Central Astoria Local Development
Coalition
Chelsea Housing Group
City Limits
Clinton Housing Development Company
Consortium for Community Development
Cooper Square Committee
Council Of Neighborhood Organizations,
Inc.
Creative Adaptations for Learning
Cypress Hills Local Development
Corporation
Development Outreach, Inc.
East Harlem Interfaith
East Harlem Tutorial Program
East New York Development Corporation
East New York Urban Youth Corps Housing
Development Fund Company, Inc.
Elmhurst Economic Development
Corporation
Essex Street and Neighbors Block
Association
Fifth A venue Committee
Ratbush Development Corporation
Ratbush Family Network
Flatbush Tenants' Council
Rushing Council On Culture and the Arts
Foundation for the Community Parent Center,
Inc.
Greater Jamaica Development Corporation
Greater Ridgewood Restoration Association
Greater Sheepshead Bay Development
Corporation
Habitat For Humanity
Hope Community, Inc.
Hunters Point Community Development
Corporation
Interfaith-Adopt-A-Building, Inc.
Inwood Preservation Corporation
Jackson Heights Community Development
Corporation
Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney
Island
Local Development Corporation of Del
Barrio, Inc.
Local Development Corporation of East New
York
Los Sures
Lower East Side Catholic Area Conference
Manhattan Borough Development Corporation
Manhattan Valley Development Corporation
Martin Luther King Concert Series, Inc.
Meltdown for the Performing Arts
Mid-Brooklyn Community Economic
Development Corporation
Middle Earth Crisis Counseling and Referral
Center
Midwood Development Corporation
Midwood Field Concert Series, Inc.
Neighborhood Housing Services of East
Flatbush
Neighborhood Housing Services of Jamaica
Neighborhood Housing Services of New York
City
North Brooklyn Development Corporation
P.O.M.O.C.
Pratt Area Community Council
Private Sector Resource Center
Progress of Peoples Development Corporation
Project Reach Youth
Prospect Lefferts Gardens Neighborhood
Association
Prospect Park Alliance
Pueblo Nuevo Housing and Development
Association
Queens Community Civic Corporation
Queens Teen Pregnancy Network
Queens Women's Network
Red Hook Arts, Inc.
Ridgewood Local Development Corporation
Rockaway Development and Revitalization
Corporation
Roosevelt Assistance Corporation
Saint Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation
Corporation
Services Now For Adult Persons, Inc.
Southeastern Greenpoint Crime Prevention
Program
Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development
Corporation
Tenant Takeover Team
The Ecumenical Community Development
Corporation
The Friendly Place
The Hope Program
The Local Development Corporation of Crown
Heights
The Richmond Hill Development Corporation
The Wilson M. Morris Community Center, Inc.
TOPS For You, Inc.
Tri-Pact, Inc.
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board
Urban Renewal Committee of South Jamaica
West End Neighbors
West Harlem Community Organization, Inc.
Westside Crime Prevention Program
Woodside On the Move
Youth DARES
Youth Environmental Services
We salute the achievements of these exemplary grassroots organizations and
appreciate and support their continuing commitment to making our communities
a better place in which to live and conduct business.

Paul B. Murray
President and CEO

Atwood Collins, III
Chief Operating Officer
THE EAST NEW YORK SAVINGS BANK MEMBER FDIC
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City Limits Magazine, August/September 1991 Issue

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August/September 1991 New York's Community Affairs News Magazine $2.

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